Comments on: Read Those Lips… There’s Treasure in Your Back Yard!

By: Bram Hepburn

Bram Hepburn — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 23:49:06 +0000

There is a greyish haze that bottle pick up from being buried, and that haze doesn’t come off with ANYTHING. They would need to be professionally cleaned, or “tumbled”, the same way a precious stone would be tumbled. As for getting off dirt and rust from the inside of the bottle, I use copper pellets or lead shot, filling the bottle with about an inch of it, then adding a little dish soap and water, then shaking it for 5 or 10 minutes while you watch TV or something. That will get if sparkling clean, if it doesn’t have the above mentioned “haze”. Good luck, and thanks for your comment!

By: Connie Williams

Connie Williams — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:15:51 +0000

I let mine soak in a solution of clorox and dawn dish soap.it takes a few days but they come out clean…make sure you fill the bottle to the rim or there’ll be a ring left.

By: Connie Williams

Connie Williams — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:05:12 +0000

It has jagged edges like a rock would have but I will send you a photo. It doesn’t look like it was broken off from anything.

By: Kiki DeLancey

Kiki DeLancey — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:14:56 +0000

Do you have any advice to lend an amateur about cleaning dug bottles? I have seen them being sold in perfectly clear, clean state but I have a terrible time just getting the dirt out of them.

By: Bram Hepburn

Bram Hepburn — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 00:38:29 +0000

Hmm, hard to tell without a photo. Off the top, it sounds like a piece of glass slag, like a bottle that was incinerated and got melted down. Or maybe a broken piece of an telegraph insulator, they have incredibly thick glass.

By: Connie Williams

Connie Williams — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:04:11 +0000

When digging in my backyard in southwest michigan I found a large glass stone like piece, the color is similar to aquamarine, you can see through it and its craggy. can you tell me what it is?

By: Bram Hepburn

Bram Hepburn — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:39:11 +0000

Thats great! Don’t know if it would work today, might look sketchy hanging out in front of the post office. Still, for a good digging site, I’ve been known to try some stranger ideas :]

By: Marissa Miller

Marissa Miller — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 01:27:21 +0000

25 years ago I lived in Colorado & worked with a bottle collector. To locate good digging spots, he’d hang out at the post office in some small town, spot an old geezer on his way out & ask where the old town dump was located. My friend found some of his best specimens & learned a lot of local history along the way too!

By: Bram Hepburn

Bram Hepburn — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 01:05:56 +0000

Well, it’s hard to tell for sure without looking at it, but it could be one of two things. If it is a light purple hue, rather than bright pink, it could be that the Manganese in the glass turned the glass purplish pink due to the exposure to years of laying in the sun. This would date your bottle to the 1890s, no later than WWI, when they had to stop using Manganese in the glass due to the war effort. This is a common way to assist in dating a digging site for a bottle digger. Now if the bottle shard is bright pink, you are right, was not something the macho farmer was using, but more likely the lady of the house. A bright pink bottle, if it is an old bottle, would have been either a perfume, or a hair product. Either way, if it was old, I’ll bet if the bottle came out whole, it would have been a nice one! Why couldn’t our forefathers have been more careful when they tossed out their trash?

By: John Garrett

John Garrett — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:14:59 +0000

I live on a farm north of Belleville, Ontario, Canada and found the top of an old bottle.
I was surprised that the glass is pink – not too macho for farmers of the past.
How can I find out what it is worth?