Finding an item that has been buried since the 19th century is most rewarding. I like to think that I am playing some small part in preserving local history.

My most recent bottle digging was quite a lot of fun. My family and I was metal detecting in the woods. It seemed like we were not going to find anything. There was no tell tale signs that we were near old bottles and seemed like we were walking in circles when my detector picked up a signal. I dug down just a couple of inches and hit some rusty metal.......but lying beside the metal was a medicine bottle from the 1800's. We dug a little bit more and we hit a lot of broken bottles. We manged to find six unbroken bottles, a glazed pottery plate, blue inkwell, kitchen knife, and a toy gun. All these items were no more than 3 inches deep and in an area no more than 4 square feet. I have dated most of the items from 1890's or earlier. The toy gun is very rusty, hopefully it will clean up. The plate is a challenge to date, there are no identifying marks on this item. See below for picture

• No Seams on bottle: bottle may be hand blown, probably has a very uneven shape and is probably a pre-1860 item.

  Or bottle may present an even shape, but was spun in a mold to smooth out the seams. Then bottle is dated 1900's->1920.

• Blown In Mold: The seams run from bottom and end a little below the top. The bottle lip may be crude and was applied by hand. The bottle is dated 1860's - early 1900's.

• 3 piece mold: Bottom part of bottle (from bottom to shoulder) there are no seams - then there's a seam near shoulder that runs around the bottle. From this shoulder seam are two seams that go up the neck and stop below the top of the lip. This was used from 1840-1870. As with 'Blown in Mold' the lip has a crude look and was applied by hand.

• Automatic Bottle Machine: The seams run to the top of the bottle, then the bottle is ABM {made by automatic bottle machine} These bottles started around 1904, and by 1920's almost all bottles were made by this process.

If bottle is embossed "Federal Law Prohibits ...", then your bottle is dated between 1933 (end of prohibition period) and 1970.

Misc. information - Yard Sales can be a great place to find old bottles. I just recently purchased over 60 bottles at a yard sale for $10.00.