Do bottle hunters clean their finds?

[DeepseekerADS]

It's an absolute no-no in other hobbies.....

 

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[Cobradude22]

I have been cleaning mine. But then again I haven’t found anything extremely significant. I usually just use warm water and brush it off. Sometimes I use dawn dish soap. I don’t see what it would hurt but then again that’s what this threads for

 

[diggingthe1]

When I was a kid I was cleaning a very nice bottle I had found. Some of those old medicines are paper thin. Sure enough I broke it. I learned to be careful. I have a few bottles in my collection that have not cleaned because I think they look better. Lots of bottles benefit from being tumbled. I usually throw the common ones up in the window for the tourists until I can get to them. I sure am liking the bottles you are finding Deepseeker.

 

[jeff of pa]

I have Cleaned Some. I Learned Not to clean some, Like painted Soda Bottles That
come out of Damp Ground or water, for at least a year. not sure the best period of time between.

I Destroyed several almost, If not Pristine Artworks, Simply by wiping them to read them.
The ones I let sit for Years, I Had no issue with.
Because I Displayed my Milks in my Kitchen, I'd clean what I could

 

[Dug]

As a digger I clean all my bottles with Bar Keepers Friend as it removes just about everything but glass sickness.

I also tumble the bottles that I plan on keeping in my collection with the exception of bottles that display a really nice iridescent patina. If I should ever dig a bottle that I may consider selling I will not tumble it as I have noticed that most buyers would prefer an un-tumbled bottle over a tumbled one.

 

[No gold in NY]

I have seen some beautiful examples of tumbled bottles on TreasureNet. I understand an expert collector can tell.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

I stumbled into this bottle digging hobby, let my neighbor's son go at it in my family's trash dump and he found tons. His mother's kitchen is almost wall to wall in old bottles and jars he found in my trash dump, and others - and as a bonus he took me to several dump sites. I don't mind him having my bottles as he actually pointed me to a new aspect of treasure hunting. And now I have over 70 bottles & jars on my shelving upstairs in my room.

My ancestors survived the Winters by canning food during the Summer months. My basement is full of canning jars dating back to World War I. I've a broken blue glass Mason from about WW1 covering the top of an old fence post a bit down my driveway.

When I was a child and Mom married again, we'd hit the city dumps on weekends - just about furnished our house with their finds. Those adventures got me into stamp collecting ---> too bad a forgotten hobby.

I still have my kinda worthless stamp collection, but that will go to my kids. Now, don't know what they gonna do with my bottles & jars

 

[smokeythecat]

i don't have many, and have manually cleaned them in the sink. I am getting the materials for a bottle tumbler, but would only use it on a few low end ones. Something to do.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

I have a double drum tumbler, but it's way too small to tumble any but the smallest bottles.

What kind of tumbler do you use for bottles? And, what media do you use in the tumbler?

 

[Planeguy's Exploration]

I always clean my bottles.

 

[CoilyGirl]

Hey Deepseeker did you get my Pm?

 

[caretaker]

I use to clean mine in the back yard during the summer until the back yard was full of devil weed, took me 2 years of burning all the green in the yard to get it out, I lucked out, be careful what you clean out of the bottles too. I only cleaned god color bottles or embossed ones, the others I left the dirt in, (I got 1000 bottle on shelves in my cellar) from the dirt, I had an infestation of spiders, it's always some thing, haha