Dr J Hostetters Stomach Bitters bottle

[Cobradude22]

Just showing off this cool bottle my dad gifted to me. It’s intriguing me to start collecting old bottles. Something about them... wow. Especially the old purple bottles. They are amazing.

 

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[smokeythecat]

That's a nice bottle. Do you have a date range for it? I am finishing up digging my first (and probably last) privy Thursday. We got a LOT of stuff. Tommybuckets is helping. He detected a big iron broken pot and that got us off to the races! Lots of nice bottles so far. It takes FOREVER to clean them up.

 

[xr7ator]

Careful with purple as apparently clear can be changed to purple to deceive.

 

[Cobradude22]

From my quick search I believe it’s from 1850s ish.

 

[Cobradude22]

Another

Here’s another cool old one we have. I believe this one is an old eye dropper bottle. And the cap has numbers around it and that’s how you went off for your dosage. This one came out of the ground, the cap still with it.

 

[villagenut]

Nice examples. Your bitters is prob a bit younger than your estimate...he was around for a long time . The Wyeth is very nice, maybe a patent date on the bottom

 

[Cobradude22]

Nice examples. Your bitters is prob a bit younger than your estimate...he was around for a long time . The Wyeth is very nice, maybe a patent date on the bottom

The pat date on the bottom is May 18th 1899

 

[sandchip]

Yeah, I have to agree with Village on your Hostetter's. It's one of the later molds and with a tooled top, probably dating around 1890. As he mentioned, they were in business for a long time. There are even a few (very few) pontiled examples out there. The range of colors, mold variants and manufacturer base marks is so wide that some folks have built large collections of nothing but Hostetter's. It's a great bottle to start your collection with, but when the bottle bug bites, he bites hard!

 

[epackage]

From my quick search I believe it’s from 1850s ish.

Your variant having a tooled lip dates it to 1890-1900, about the same as your Wyeth, great started bottles for any collection.

 

[fistfulladirt]

That type of Hostetters is very common but cool for a collection.
I assembled a group of cheap bitters years ago and they are worth much less now than what they sold for back in the 70’s/80’s when bottle collecting was really popular, and you could always find a couple local shows per year.

I really like the cobalt w/stopper.

 

[Gaspipe]

Hostetters bitters was a very popular “medicine” from 1850-1910; in 1903 when the Pure Food and drug act basically outlawed many patent medicines because they were mostly alcohol.As a group they are highly collectible with some people specializing in them . The oldest ones are pontiled and the older ones are often crude and come in a variety of light to almost black amber. They can be quite valuable. Yours is of 1890-1910 vintage and is mold blown. It is a very common variety and from a value perspective maybe 10 bucks . I have dug many like yours and they are always fun to dig.
From the look of your finds
you are in a turn if last century dump.

 

[unclemac]

you will learn a lot on this forum, keep posting