Dig them bottle dumps! (Eastport: houses, schools, live)

[mollysmiles]

Great thread Maineah!! Growing up in Eastport my boyfriend's family had a natural spring on their property. I remember the first time I went to fill the water bottles with him, and he showed me a large pile of old bottles a short distance from the spring. I'd seen a number of the little old bottles, my Dad collected them, but it was great to see the larger ones, many still unbroken. After reading this thread I'm wondering if they're still there.....I may have to make a phone call before heading to the tourneys!

[Coaster]

Bottle dumps are very cool, and they can yield some valuable finds -- some of those old bottles are worth a lot of money to collectors. It was a little strange to see this thread, since my current issue of Down East magazine has a story about bottles and bottle dumps in it.

Buried Treasures - Down East Magazine - Maine

The guy who collects bottles from underwater sites is really intriguing, I think.

[Maineah]

I hear ya. We ran across an undisturbed logging camp dump on the St. John last fall while we were partridge hunting. It had never been dug or even looked through by the looks of it. The top layer of bottles were from the 60's and we weren't real interested in spending the day rooting around in it. I'd like to go back there some time and take a Sunday and really look through it.

[Maineah]

I remember when we were kids taking our BB guns and going down back behind the house and finding a bottle dump. We'd set up the old bottles and see if we could break them. I'm sure there are collectors gasping at the thought of that but hey...we were just kids! I remember the bigger thick quart bottles like Casco soda were so tough the bb's would bounce right off them! After having a ricochet or two hit you in the head we looked for different targets! We soon turned to plastic bleach bottles as we could see our shots better and they didn't shoot back.

[ribbets]

found a Bubble-Up (like 7-UP) soda bottle under the camp when I put in the frost walls..

[Maineah]

I have an old Bubble Up bottle in the barn! Now I'll really date myself and tell you I used to buy Bubble up in the store when I was a kid.

[msina]

My brother once had a collection of old patent medicine bottles.

[Maineah]

Those patent medicine bottles are really nice. We have a few of them but none of them are pristine. They have chips in them here and there . The flare on the necks seem to chip easily. I have seen photos of some big collections with back light walls. It's amazing the variety in these bottles.

[arzachena]

I have a small collection of bottles too.

In 1977 my folks had an in ground pool installed and every evening my brother and I would go through the dirt pile. We found bits of pottery and whole glass bottles.

[Lindsey_Mcfarren]

I was just looking on Ebay, you can sell them if you find a nice enough example.

I would also take a metal detector along and see what else was discarded in the area. A single coin from 200 years ago is worth alot of money.