Antique Way

Antique Soda Bottle Introduce

Antique Soda Bottle - $6,251

The bottle pictured here sold for over $6,000 the other day. Before you think 'who would pay such an insane amount of money for a bottle', let's dive a little deeper into the history of it.

This bottle is an antique soda bottle from about mid-nineteenth century; it is over 150 years old! It was made by the company Gardner and Brown, as in Philip Gardner and Christopher Brown. The pair were in business together for only two years, running a mineral water manufcaturing facility in Baltimore. Thus, besides it being an old bottle, it is also rare since it was only produced between 1846 and 1849. On top of that, most of the samples found today are green, which makes this puce-colored bottle even more special.

The shape of the bottle is distinct, but not specific to these manufacturers. Many soda bottles of this age have this shape, referred to as the Torpedo shape. The aim of the design was to prevent bottles from being kept upright. Guess why? Well, in the early days of Soda bottling, a cork was used for closing the bottle. The cork had to stay moist to prevent shrinking, which would cause an imperfect seal. The simple solution to this problem was the design of a bottle that simply could not stand upright.

While looking up some information on antique bottles and bottle collecting, we were overwhelmed with the detailed information available on bottle collecting. Bottle collecting literally comes in all shapes and forms. People collect soda bottles, beer bottles, bitter bottles, pharmacy bottles, and so on, and items in this collecting niche can range from a couple of dollars to tens of thousands (!). If you don't know anything about antique bottles, you would walk right past that $ 5 garage sale item, worth a couple of thousand on the collector's market. Here is some information to get you started.

A very nice and detailed site we found is The Historic Glass Identification & Information website, maintained by U.S Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. This guide will keep you busy for a while! A collection of Baltimore bottles can be found here. Then there is Antiquebottles.com, which has extensive info on all kinds of antique bottles. Last but not least, a good bit of soda history can be found here. An extensive amount of books and price guidesis available online as well, go check 'm out.

GEORGE / {eagle} / {crystal palace} / AT NEW YORK

GEORGE / {eagle} / {crystal palace} / AT NEW YORK pontilled soda from 1853 when New York hosted America's first World's Fair. Also see back side. History courtesy of seller bottle-painter:

In 1853, New York had it's own Crystal Palace Exposition, a poor copy of the London Original. The building was poorly constructed and rain leaked through the roof soaking exhibits and visitors alike. It 1858 a fire destroyed the building. It's place in history is that it was the first such international exhibit on American soil.

C. ALFS / SODA WATER / CHARLESTON

C. Alf was a druggist on North King Street in Charleston SC in 1840. He is considered by many to be the first soda water bottler in North America. He learned his technique from Paris druggists who were pioneers in carbonated beverage bottling. The first type of bottle was the pyramid shape which had a defect in design with the neck being too thin. This defect along with the fact that he was only a bottler for one and a half years has made the pyramid the rarest of the colored sodas. The newer design (see example below) was a shorter reinforced thicker glass bottle that was more compact.

Dr. Bates National Tonic Beer Centennial 1876

This bottle was also featured on the cover of OLD BOTTLE MAGIZINE in 1976. Dug from a dump in Baltimore county Maryland. Dr. Benjaman Bates is listed for four years 1873-1876. His offices were located at the Northeast corner of Balto & Charles streets in 1873 and in 1875 he was located at 228 west Balto St.

JOHN KNECHTLE / HILTON HEAD

South Carolina bottle from Port Royal (on Hilton Head Island), the town that was established during the war of the Northern Aggression. Port Royal was the base for the blockade ships and a place for the sailors to relax. The main street was named "Robbers Row", and that is where John Knechtle had his business. This civil war town located on the north part of the island was only active for three years, so this Soda Bottle would be circa 1862, to April of 1865. Bottle was sold on eBay Sep 29, 2000.

BLOUNT SPRINGS NATURAL SULPHUR WATER / TRADE {BS monogram} MARK

This bottle was distributed by Blount Springs Hotel - more info on the hotel can be found in the 1960 book "Historic Alabama Hotels and Resorts" pages 58-69.

At first I thought the strange-shaped lip may have been the result of grinding down the lip to hide a chip in the top of the blob lip, but further research has shown the lips came this way on these bottles and some grinding may have occurred during manufacturing of the bottle. Another example of this bottle is pictured on page 186 and 219 in "The Illustrated Price Guide of Antique Bottles" by Carlo Sellari - that picture shows the same lip shape.