# Remembering Our First Bottle Find



## slugplate (Jan 15, 2020)

Do you remember finding your very first bottle? Mine was a Schaefer "Barrel" blob top beer I found in the Spring of 1999 purely by accident. That find had me addicted from the moment I found it. Twenty years later I have dug or hunted over 200 keeper bottles and I'm proud to say I have worked hard to get every single bottle in my collection. Generally speaking, for me, it's not about how many bottles I've uncovered and kept, it's about the reward for my efforts. I won't get financially secure with my keepers, but unearthing bottles has made me rich in other ways.


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## Screwtop (Jan 15, 2020)

There is an old gully, beside my grandmothers house in Washington County PA. I think I was about 13 or so, and as all young boys do, I was playing in the water, that I'm pretty sure was malaria infested. I saw the base of a bottle sticking out of the bank, and being the curious type, I pulled it out. It was a Chas. H. Fletchers Castoria bottle, with screw threads. Ultra common, but I didn't know what it was, and I ran inside proclaiming I found a bottle from the revolutionary war, lol!

Four years later, I know about bottles, how to date them, approximate values, and now I love collecting them. I have my first blob tops, collect Coca Cola straight sides, and love reading about Coca Cola copycats.


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## slugplate (Jan 15, 2020)

Screwtop said:


> There is an old gully, beside my grandmothers house in Washington County PA. I think I was about 13 or so, and as all young boys do, I was playing in the water, that I'm pretty sure was malaria infested. I saw the base of a bottle sticking out of the bank, and being the curious type, I pulled it out. It was a Chas. H. Fletchers Castoria bottle, with screw threads. Ultra common, but I didn't know what it was, and I ran inside proclaiming I found a bottle from the revolutionary war, lol!
> 
> Four years later, I know about bottles, how to date them, approximate values, and now I love collecting them. I have my first blob tops, collect Coca Cola straight sides, and love reading about Coca Cola copycats.


Exactly. The excitement finding bottles is addictive.


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## PlaneDiggerCam (Jan 15, 2020)

The first bottle I found was a 1 oz Wheeler's Drug Store Mystic, Conn. I found it under a piece of metal while detecting and nearby I found a second! Therefore I had stumbled upon my first bottle dump. The bottle was and still is one of my favorites!


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## nhpharm (Jan 15, 2020)

6 years old and digging with my parents in New Hampshire, I dug a little Burnett/Boston bottle.  I hid it in my pocket and gave it to my dad for his birthday (or Christmas-I can't remember).  Don't know where it is now but I'm still digging 33 years later...and started bringing my oldest son with me when he was 5.


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## Taxi Mac (Feb 2, 2020)

My first bottle was an early 3 In 1 Oil bottle. I was 10 or 12 years old. While running thru the Moonlit woods one night playing Capture The Flag at Boy scouts, I tripped and fell running up a hill. When I stood up to check for cuts and scrapes, I noticed the ground "sparkled" like the first snowfall of the year! Not knowing what it was I bent down and found the 3 in 1. Upon bringing it home, my folks were more exited than I was. We went back on the weekend and found the biggest dump of our lives! My cousin and I spent the next 2-3 years digging out everything the good folks of the day thru away. From bottles, Mason Jars, Porcelain licence plates to badges and war medals! OH! And one day alone, 12 Atwoods Jaundice bitters bottles.
All this on the shores of Lake Cochituate in Wayland Mass. From there we searched every square inch of land we could hike or bicycle to. All told, we found and dug around 6-8 dumps within our neighborhood. All within earshot of mother calling "BRUCE, SUPPER'S READY"!!
What a life!


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## buriedtreasuretime (Feb 3, 2020)

slugplate said:


> Do you remember finding your very first bottle? Mine was a Schaefer "Barrel" blob top beer I found in the Spring of 1999 purely by accident. That find had me addicted from the moment I found it. Twenty years later I have dug or hunted over 200 keeper bottles and I'm proud to say I have worked hard to get every single bottle in my collection. Generally speaking, for me, it's not about how many bottles I've uncovered and kept, it's about the reward for my efforts. I won't get financially secure with my keepers, but unearthing bottles has made me rich in other ways.



My mom took me out to an area my dad and her hunted birds in northern Nevada. We dug down 3 feet and found 10 blob top brown beers all remarkably opalized. One had a chipped lip but I retain 6 of those 10- it’s a great memory, my mom would get me out of school if she noticed burned embers and broken glass at an excavation by the city workers. Dug up a “china town” privy once on one such occasion my mom got me out of school- lots of pottery sake and soy sauce pots, opium bottles and rice cups- pumpkin seed flasks. I was impatient at 13 years old- broke a lot of stuff! 


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