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Here is a Patent Dating Chart to help you date your items. Here is a Postcard Dating Guide
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Located in Mercersburg, Pa.
Bottles
Milk Bottles, Medicine, Bitters, Household, Soda, Fruit Jars, Ink bottles and More. We have hundreds of bottles in our shop. This is only a small sample.
Click on the link to the right of the picture to view bottles in any category below to go to bottles We have for sale
Beer, Soda and Whiskey Bottles
Medical, Household and Ink
Bottles
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Dating your bottles
We get many e-mails and also many people in our shop asking how to tell how old the bottles in their collection are. As there have been thousands of different bottle styles produced over the 2,000 plus years we have used glass bottles. Dating bottles is not an easy undertaking. However there are many ways to tell the approximate age of your bottles. The lip style, mold seams and the pontil marks. Rather than try and explain all of this myself, I have found a page that shows nice pictures. I think most people will find it easy to use. Here is the link http://www.mattsoldhouse.com/MC/bottles/bottletypes/bottletypes.htm
Books For the bottle collector
Here is a list of books and their authors, most can be ordered through your local book store or Amazon.com. Please remember that bottles change values depending on your areas demand. With this in mind price guides should only be used as a reference to pricing and rarity and may not always show the going price for your area.
Antique Glass Bottles: Their History and Evolution (1500-1850) by Willy Van den
Bottles: Identification and Price Guide by Michael Polak
Bottle Pricing Guide by Hugh Cleveland
Bottle Collector's Book by Bob Ferraro, Pat Ferraro
Bottles and Bottle Collecting by A.A. Hedges
Kovels' Bottles Price List by Ralph and Terry Kovel
Official Price Guide to Bottles by Jim Megura
One Thousand Fruit Jars by Schroeder
The Collector's Price Guide to Bitters Bottles A to Z (1992) by Glenn Poch
The Collector's Guide to Inkwells : Identification & Values by Veldon Badders.
The Collector's Guide to Old Fruit Jars - RED BOOK No. 8 by
Douglas M. Leybourne Jr.
Bottle Collectors Clubs
We made this list from clubs that were listed on other bottle sites. If your club is not listed here, e-mail us the information and we will try and list it as soon as possible.
List of bottle clubs in the Eastern United States:
| Southeast Bottle Club offers a free regional newsletter that reports on bottle events in the Southeastern U.S. The club sponsors an annual Greensboro NC show and several other events. | . | ||||||||
| Connecticut: Southern Connecticut Antique Bottle Collectors Association operated by Greg Mills, Email: 2gmills@csi.com | |||||||||
| Delaware: Delmarva Antique Bottle Club in Lewes, Delaware | |||||||||
| Florida: Emerald Coast Bottles Collectors | |||||||||
| Georgia: Southeastern Antique Bottle Club in Atlanta, GA has their own web page called The Whittle Mark which is run by Fred Taylor, | |||||||||
| Maryland: Baltimore Antique Bottle Club | |||||||||
| Michigan: Huron Valley Bottle & Insulator Club | |||||||||
| Mississippi: Mobile Bottle Collectors Club | |||||||||
| New Jersey: Jersey Shore Bottle Club | |||||||||
New York:
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North Carolina Clubs:
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Ohio clubs:
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| Rhode Island: The Little Rhody Bottle Club | |||||||||
| South Carolina Bottle Club | |||||||||
| Tennessee: State of Franklin Antique Bottles and Collectables Association in Gray, TN | |||||||||
Virginia Clubs:
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| Washington, D.C.: Potomac Bottle Collectors Club, Email: pehraug@aol.com |
List of bottle clubs in the Western United States:
| Arizona: The Phoenix Antiques, Bottles, & Collectibles Club | |||||
California:
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| Iowa Antique Bottleers | |||||
| New Mexico: The New Mexico Historical Bottle Society |
Tips on Grading bottle condition
Following are some terms used to identify the condition of a bottle.
Condition:
 | Mint - bottle is in brand new condition with absolutely no damage. Also called "attic mint" because most bottles of this condition must have been in an attic (i.e. and never underground) to have survived in such perfect condition. A tumbled bottle can never be mint. |
| Near Mint - bottle would be mint except for some very minor damage like small stain, tiny nick, light scratch, small open bubble, or tiny patches of case wear. Lightly tumbled bottle can grade near mint if no other condition issues. |
| Excellent - Between "Near Mint" and "Very Good". Bottle may have some light stain and/or light case wear and/or light scratches but no chips/cracks. Moderate to heavily tumbled bottle can grade excellent if they just retain some light scratches or ground wear. |
| Very Good - some scratches and medium-to-heavy case wear, some inside and/or outside staining. May have some minor nicks and no more than one or two small chips. |
| Good - heavy scratches, substantial case wear, heavy staining, some chips. |
| Poor - cracked and/or chipped. |
| Damaged - large cracks and/or large pieces chipped away. |
Some terms used to describe defects and condition of bottles:
| Bubble: a bubble is a air bubble that became trapped in the glass during the manufacturing process. Bubbles are not considered damage. In fact, bubbles usually add to the appeal of old glass. Glass made after about 1920 does not usually have bubbles. Crude glass almost always has bubbles. An "open bubble" may be considered damage - see below. A lot of small elongated bubbles, closely grouped together, are called seed bubbles. |
| Bruise: same as "fish eye", except some bruises may be more clear than whitish. A faint bruise is more clear, and a more pronounced bruise is whitish (i.e. a fish eye). |
| Case wear: scuffs, small scratches, and wearing away of the embossed lettering caused by the process of recycling the bottles. A case wear ring may be seen around soda bottles that have been rolled frequently across the rollers of a recycling machine. |
| Chip: a spot on the bottle where a piece or chunk or glass has been lost due to damage. |
| Coated: a shellac or other type of coating that covers bottle, usually in an attempt to conceal heavy case wear. Sometimes mineral oil is used to coat the bottle, which leaves it with a distinctive oily feel but it does hide the case wear. |
| Crack: a usually uneven line inside the glass that is the result of damage. |
| Crazing: vertical lines in neck of bottle that almost look like faint cracks but are the result of twisting and cooling process during manufacture. |
| Ding: small impact mark, larger than a ping but less than 1/4". A ding larger than 1/4" is called a "bruise" or "fish eye" if that glass remains intact, or is called a "chip" if the glass is removed from the impact spot. |
| Fish eye: whitish circular mark on surface of glass caused by impact. |
| Flake: very small and shallow chip, typically less than 1/4" wide and less than 1/16" deep. |
| Flash: a very faint "crack" - bottle sometimes has to be turned a certain way to see it. |
| Gouge: a area of glass that is missing from the bottle, typically when a "fish eye" is removed. |
| Ground wear: a bottle that has been cleaned may still retain "pitting" and other marks that are the result of the bottle being buried underground. |
| Hairline crack: a very thin and short crack. |
| Irridescence: a type of stain that has an opaline or rainbow color. Sometimes this type of stain is very difficult to clean |
| Nick: very tiny chip, less than 1/16". |
| Open bubble: a bubble that has become opened to the outside air, either inside or outside the bottle. Outside open bubbles are sometimes considered damage since they may result from impact to the bubble area, but open bubbles are also seen as the result of the crude manufacturing process. At any rate, any open bubbles should be disclosed when describing the condition of a bottle. |
| Ping: small impact mark, typically smaller than 1/16". Smaller than a ding. |
| Pitting: small little pin-size holes in the outside of the glass that are the result of glass being underground. |
| Popped-out fish eye: a bruise (or "fish eye") that has popped out, leaving a curved chip in side of the bottle. |
| Repair: epoxy is sometimes used to repair a bottle by filling in the missing piece with epoxy resin that closely matches the original color of the glass. These repairs are sometimes done so well that they cannot be detected by collectors. To be sure, expose the bottle in the dark to a strong black light - any epoxy repairs will glow a bright white while the rest of the bottle looks dark. Sorry, but those portable hand-held black lights are not strong enough to make the epoxy glow. |
| Scrape: a mark on the outside of the glass, sometimes caused by a shovel scraping the bottle. |
| Scratch: small lines on the outside of the bottle caused by the glass being scratched by a sharp object. |
| Stain: a whitish film on the bottle that typically results from mineral deposits while the bottle was underground. This stain can be cleaned. Bottles with labels may also have original content stain which is the remants of the original product (e.g. medicine, ink, ...) that has long since evaporated. |
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