Mnt. Hobbleskirt

[Blak bart]

Last year while fishing out of key west I accidentally stumbled upon the biggest mountain of bottles ive ever seen. I accidentally dropped a small wahoo (18-20 pounds) between the dock and boat. As I dawend my mask and fins and attempted to retrieve the wahoo I could see it was being eaten by a large jewfish. I tried to brush away the large tarpon and wrestle my prize from the jaws of this monster, but watched in horror as he swallowed it whole. As I regained my composer and surveyed my surroundings, I could see that these docks were sitting atop a bottle dump of enormous proportions. these docks have been built and rebuilt over the same bottom since before this country was a country. The next day I quickly retrieved 3 mesh bags of bottles. I collected 2 bags of hobbleskirt cokes, and one of misselanious others that were highly embossed. I cant wait to return and explore more.this mound is about 100 yards long by 8 feet high and 20 feet wide.under the docks this mound is actually awash at low tide. The prop wash from the many boats that dock here has cut into this mound like a mail box does for the treasure salvors. Would it be worth retrieving more of these coke bottles as I will have to move thousands of them to get to the better 1800s and 1700s pickings below this layer. I know many people have had great success retrieving black glass from key west harbor in the past. It appers that this particular spot has been untouched by other bottle divers.Many of the cokes were bottled in key west and are embossed as such. Ive herd they could hold some value.


Ill take pics of some of the others l recovered that day and post them in a little bit.

 

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[Jason in Enid]

Awesome! Thousands of bottles? grab them all and put them up for sale. If you only clear a couple dollars each, you still have a nice chunk of cash to fund your treasure hunting. Thats exactly what I would be doing in your shoes anyway. Hell, you may throw a couple up on flea-bay and find you can make a lot of money selling these. Anything Coke is a highly collectible.

 

[Blak bart]

Awesome! Thousands of bottles? grab them all and put them up for sale. If you only clear a couple dollars each, you still have a nice chunk of cash to fund your treasure hunting. Thats exactly what I would be doing in your shoes anyway. Hell, you may throw a couple up on flea-bay and find you can make a lot of money selling these. Anything Coke is a highly collectible.

You have a great point there jason. I shall return and collect more.that didnt take to much encouragement. Here are some others from that day.





Its probaly more like 10s of thousands. PLus everything else that people throw overboard.got to be a skeloton at the bottom of this mound.could be dangerous and toxic digging into this mound. Broken glass, jagged rusty metal, fishing wire, hooks, and other trash, who knows whats buried in there.

 

[bottlehunterofcoscob]

Good start so far, keep going for the older stuff! Good luck!

 

[Jason in Enid]

Those are some great looking bottles. You should be able to get a pretty penny for those. Looks like you are already into the very early 1900's on age.

 

[Blak bart]

Those are some great looking bottles. You should be able to get a pretty penny for those. Looks like you are already into the very early 1900's on age.

There were some older ones washing around in the propwash blow outs at the base of the mound.
A diver that cleans boat bottoms there said he calls the jewfish big moe, and that he has lived there many years.

 

[villagenut]

I would try to unload all the hobbleskirts as one lot to a local tourist shop. They may give you some immediate cash instead of one or two bites on ebay. Tourists may scarf them up, at least that can be your sales pitch anyways.