I recently wrote an article entitled The Noble Collector that talked about some particular bottles that have sold for big dollars lately. These are extremely rare and desirable pieces that can take your breath away not only in the beauty of the piece but in the dollar amount paid for them. I received some emails and blogs that pointed out that not all bottles are selling for big bucks and that there is beauty in so many bottles, that a collector doesn’t have to mortgage their house to own them.  In other words, a bottle doesn’t have to be valuable to be strikingly beautiful and a delight to behold.  

I myself remember sitting in my room as a 14 year-old gazing at the beautiful albeit less valuable bottle collection that I had traded for or dug myself.  No, they weren’t a purple Masonic or a blue Homestead Bitters but rather simple bottles that had their own special appeal.  An unembossed whiskey with as much whittle as a bottle could hold, or a clear Owl Drug that was turning purple and delighted me in it’s intricate design and embossed wise old owl staring at me as it perched on my table.  No, it wasn’t George Washington in his infinite wisdom or the word bitters boldly embossed across a green cabin shaped form, but rather just an owl on a clear square bottle.  

As time went on and I ended up running a bottle auction, selling some pieces worth thousands of dollars and actually holding bottles I’d only seen in books. I still remember hiking into the Santa Cruz Mountains and screaming with delight at finding a green capers, a stunningly beautiful relic from the past. We’d look at every bubble, peer into the different shades of green that seemed to dance as we held it into the afternoon sunlight. In those days, we didn’t see these super valuable-one-of-a-kind sensations that catch the eye of the most advanced collector.  We liked western made bottles and whiskies were our favorites although just about anything would have us drooling. We’d read the John Thomas book, Whiskey Bottles of the Old West and Bill and Betty Wilson’s Spirit Bottles of the Old West, until we’d fall asleep and dream of the different whiskey bottles and the one in a million chance of finding one. In those days just to see a common whiskey that was listed in the Thomas book was a treat.  A bottle show was akin to being at the Academy Awards and our lives revolved around bottles.  We were learning, studying and doing as much research as a student working on their doctorate, we just didn’t know it.  To us, it was simply fun.  

There are so many great bottles out there that can be had for the price of a six pack of soda that bottle collecting is a perfect hobby for any budget.  I’ve shown some of the different bottles one can collect that can be had at a bottle show or Ebay or a yard sale for anywhere from a few bucks to a hundred.  The blue Owl bottle may be more but you can also find examples with some slight damage that normally might cost $500 but are easily obtainable for pennies on the dollar.  The Udolpho Wolfe’s Schnapps are a great example.  We have pictures of collections of these interesting bottles on our website and so many of these schnapps’ can be snapped up for $20 to $50 bucks.  Look at the Warner’s Safe Cure.  I’ve always said that if that bottle were rare, like the Tippecanoe made by the same company, it would be a multi-thousand-dollar bottle. Sodas are still very affordable even in the rainbow of colors they were made in. Mineral Waters, like the early Congress Springs, they are usually very crude and always very beautiful in shades of greens and teals and they can be had for under $50 a lot of the time. You are getting an early pontiled bottle with loads of character and beauty for a song.  

Unembossed bottles like early squares or fifths, my goodness, the combination of colors and different identities are limitless and affordable.  What about the common railroad and cornucopia flasks just to name a few? For a couple hundred dollars you can travel back in time to the 1840’s and pick up a bottle that was hand blown and still displays a marvel of limitless imagination and creativity.  To line a window sill with a myriad of different colored lesser-valued bottles is a wonder for the people who come and visit your home or office.  It’s only after you’ve completed your quest to search for the common, to the scarce and then onto the rare and extremely rare that you begin to understand the incredible variety and variants of the different antique bottles out there.  It’s a natural progression to eventually seek out the best. There’s nothing wrong with that, to be The Noble Collector, but collectors need to know what they can find with just a few hundred bucks and a keen eye for beauty.  

So ‘tis the season, the time to reach for the sky and grab that bottle worth more than it’s weight in gold, but it’s also time to reach for the beautiful and stunning in a $20 dollar bottle.  A good friend of mine who has one of the finest collections on the West Coast still treasures one of his bottles more than any.  What is it?  A Greer’s Washing Ammonia.  The color is astounding and although it’s common, it gets his heart racing as strongly as the day he picked up his first California Clubhouse.  Such is the nature of the antique bottle.  

A Nice Selection of Different Shapes and Colors