Antique Bottle Collecting

( Article orginally published May 1970 )

Antique bottles, a collecting mania that burst on the western scene a few years ago like the proverbial mushroom cloud, has taken an intriguing new turn.

After a century that largely ignored history which drew Argonauts fresh from Nevada's Comstock and California's Mother Lode to the next big strike "down under," today's hobbyists are beginnng to follow the trail across the Pacific to return highly collectble artifacts to their western U. S. point of origin.

Within the past several months Australian embossed bottles as well as their U. S. counterparts diverted from supply lines to western U. S. mines are appearing as a growingly acceptable item in antique auctions, displays and on dealers shelves. Bottle collecting in itself is still a "babe" on the hobby scene. Ten years ago if you walked into almost any leading antique shop and asked for a discarded empty whiskey bottle you'd have gotten a look that indicated the proprietor was ready to call the funny buggy.

A few years later prices on that same bottle had spiraled to as much as three figures-in rare cases the far top end of three figures and higherleaving dealers, lke their customers, still breathless at the suddenness with which a trash pile throw-away had metamorphosed into a prestige item. What fascination is there about an empty contaner that makes dump scavengers of otherwise dignified white collar workers - and even executives? What induces them to spend weekends happily risking sunburn, scraped knuckles, snake bite, dust allergy and sore muscles so they can spend the following week bragging about their finds of cobalt Ayers, amber mouth blown chestnuts or Elk's Milk Whiskies?

It is something else that outranks the attraction of crude workmanship, color, shape and embossing, endearing as these may be in themselves. It is the intimate insight into history that can be held in the hand, personified in the use to which the contents of the bottle were put.

A shelf-full of bottles that date back to the beginnings of the west constitute a heart's eye view of the aches and pains, diet, celebrations, vanities and peccadillos of the pioneers. And within the past decade the fraternity of bottle buffs has given rise to a new collector's vocabulary, sprinkled with such expressions as blob tops, "jakes," BIMALS, and a network of hobby clubs with members across the U. S., Canada, Panama and 14 countries overseas.

However in today's west the first flush of the bottle bonanza, like the Gold Rush that spawned it, is beginning to "play out" due to eager hordes who have crossed the continent to dig, re-dig and even sift likely hunting grounds.

A logical extension of the hobby is to follow along to the next sequence of greener pastures. A resulting "bonus" is that individual and club contacts by mail and in person between Australian and American hobbyists are strengthening friendships on both sides of the Pacific.