1930 bottles not worth digging?

nopeseeya

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Dec 8, 2014
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Been seeing people say bottles from 20s-40s not worth collecting/digging. These wont be more collectible in in the future? My best bottle dump yeilded 150+ bottles and are from post prohibition era. Alot of federal lawwhiskey bottles, wine bottles, and others. Here in California its a bit harder to find those 1800s bottles. Ill keep looking but curious if i should get the rest of this dump first. To me they are history of the place ive found them, and one day will be more appriciated. Thoughts?

Not sure why the pics upside down.
The main ones of interest are the whiskey, wine, and colored bottles. I understand alot of the smaller one are not as good (such as last pic)

Also i dont do this for the money, its more about the history of the people before us. Makes you feel a certain way.

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some nice bottles. i like all of the colored ones:icon_thumright:
 

Monetarily speaking, no, most are not worth much. But if you are like me, and you could care less about the value, but you care about the history, then yes! Start digging! To me, the history is everything, so dig it. Dig it all. It'll just give you practice for when you do find those 1800's dumps.
 

If we knew what would be collectible we would all be rich ya never know who knew a convertible hemi cuda 1970 would be worth millions for only 5000 off the showroom floor. Many things we just dont know but I collect stuff for more than just what its worth I wont toss a damaged silver quarter away cause its not a key date . Those are some cool finds there I think
 

Depends on what others consider collectible. Take all the ones you don't care for or you have multiples of to the swap meet with your other do dads. When asked, they're all $7.50ea bottles in that box or pile. "I really don't want to mess with them that much so I'll let you have them for $5.00ea." The artsy fartsy folks will snap them up. In my book, $5 a pop is better than $0 sitting in buckets on my garage floor.
 

I have dump site that yields from late 1800s to the mid 40s, I only keep cool jars, bottles with heavy embossing, sodas with painted labels and anything with local history, but those are what i like.....
 

I say those are years worth collecting. Its possible those saying bottles from 20s-40s not worth collecting - Dont collect bottles from that era. But that is not saying others dont have an interest in those years.

If you got the room to store them if not displaying, I say collect them, dig them and keep em.
 

here's the trouble with collecting this era bottle . by the late 1930s most containers became standardized all mustards look pretty much the same . sodas are not embossed . milks of the 1940s and 50s may have some pyro on them but to dig them in good shape is hard. and if lets say you dig a milk of magnesia in California you can dig the same exact one in new jersey . in other worlds most people who dig have it or go to a file market and pick up 3 for a dollar .
 

If I kept all the 40s and 50s glass I have dug, my family would call for an intervention.i could easily become a hoarder if it weren't for some disciplinary digging restraints:tongue3:
 

One other thought I always have is If I dig them and keep them for display or sell them, they're being seen by others. Around here if I leave stuff behind it'll be targets for the shooters. You can leave bottles & cans next to a covered hole and in a week or two they'll all be shot to sh#t. Bet you Arizonans can attest to this! Bottles all shot up, the saguaro next to the pile shot to Swiss cheese, ammo boxes, casings, potato chips bags all over but no beer cans why? Because they take those home to cash in.
 

OOOH, TARGETS!! Man, we shot a lot of bottles when I was young. We'd go down to the town dump with our .22s and .410s to shoot rats which are fairly wiley and more often shoot bottles and cans. This was in the late 50s and early 60s and there were plenty of 30s,40s, and 50s bottles there. Then we discovered a place in the woods with thousands of bottles which we also shot a lot of. I got a job at an antique store that belonged to a friend of my mothers and on my first day there my first task was to wash some recently dug bottles. I was surprised when she told me some of the bottles were a hundred years old and they looked just like some we had shot the day before. She told me I must be mistaken so after work I went up in the woods and grabbed a bunch of bottles. Next day she couldn't believe they were the same as I had said and gave me some books on bottle ID. Well, I was 13 and quit my job and dug that ancient dump which took me three summers to fully excavate. I made more money selling antique bottles to antique shops than I had made mowing lawns or shoveling snow and had a nice little pile of cash from my work by the time I was 17. But I'd likely still shoot those 1940s bottles if we were still allowed to discharge firearms around here and it wasn't so overdeveloped.
 

Was talking about this last night. I think my buddy summed it up nicely. "A box of not so valuable (anything) makes for some good trading material to the right person.
 

Why would you not collect them, they are beautiful...If you like bottles, I say go a head and keep them if you have the room.....To me its not the money value of this, its the fun, and the history...
 

I'm not a bottle guy but I do keep some that I find because I think there are cool. But I also collect Oakland Raider memorabilia which isn't worth much except to me! If you like them, dig them, clean them and display them!!!
 

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