Category: Antiques

I had a 15-minute break from work one Saturday a couple of years ago and decided to spend it cruising through the flea market up the road, near where I live here in Maine. I’m an antique bottle digger and collector, and that’s what I generally hunt for at a flea market, but I’ll also look for anything I can buy and turn around and sell on eBay, or something I can use to trade for bottles.

I was walking at a brisk pace, almost jogging, and passed a table with a peanut butter jar full of marbles. It was obvious that they were modern marbles, but my eye caught a glimpse of something in the jar that actually made me skid to a stop on the dusty path.

One of the hundred or so marbles in the jar, right in the front, in plain view, was a deep amber color that looked very familiar. When it comes to antique marbles, I know “just enough to get me in trouble,” as the saying goes. But just days before, I had been at a different flea market in Rowley, Mass., and was talking to a very knowledgeable dealer who sets up there every week. He’s nice enough to answer all the marble questions that I ask of him and, as a courtesy, I always buy something from him just to give him the business. One of the marbles that dealer had on his table really caught my eye. It was a Gooseberry Swirl marble.

I didn’t buy one from him, because the ones he had were priced at between $75 and $125 each. I picked up the peanut butter jar at the flea market table, and sure enough, the marble I had seen had that same glowing, dark-honey amber color with yellow swirling strands twisting around its center. It was a Gooseberry!

I asked the dealer “how much for the jar of marbles?” He said five bucks, which made for a very quick sale.

I took the jar out to my truck and opened the lid, and poured out the marbles on the console between the seats, so I could find the Gooseberry. To my amazement, I found another one in the mix, and then another and another. As I fished through the pile, I wound up finding a total of eight Gooseberries, including two oversized marbles of almost a half inch in diameter each. They were all in perfect condition and I wound up selling them over the following months for more than $800.

I had always loved glass marbles, as well as simple primitive clay marbles that I would come across in my years of digging and scuba diving for antique bottles. But this experience added some juice to my interest; the bonus possibility of finding marbles that were really valuable, not just interesting and beautiful.

Marbles at Auction
One of the top companies you’ll ever find for purchasing or selling antique American bottles is Sacramento-based American Bottle Auction. As an avid bottle collector, I have found the people there great to deal with and very approachable. They tend to offer top-quality American bottles in a wide range of values in the most interesting of bottle categories.

I was recently informed of the exciting news that on Sept. 20, 2013, American Bottle Auction will be offering what sounds like it will be a terrific selection of antique marbles.

If you go to its website, you’ll find information about the company, with bottle auction completed auction catalogs to peruse, and plenty of other information and photographs. I look forward to seeing many marbles like the ones pictured in this article being offered at its September auction.

Bram Hepburn collects 19th-century New England bottles and glass, having spent the last 30-plus years digging and diving for bottles in New England and upstate New York. He lives in Eliot, Maine.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

Also featured in the “All Bottled Up” exhibit at the Woodman Institute Museum in Dover, N.H., are bottles from another local collector, Dave Landry. They feature amazing colors and designs of his bottles, including figural bitters bottles, mineral water bottles from Saratoga Springs, and a large cobalt blue master ink bottle, among many others.

It is not every day that a person can dig old trash out of the ground and have it wind up in a historical museum. So I was thrilled when Tom Hindle, the director of the Woodman Institute Museum in Dover, N.H., contacted me and asked if I would loan the museum some of the antique bottles and glass shards I have dug up from the ground or salvaged while scuba diving over the years.

The museum is featuring an exhibit titled “All Bottled Up,” a history of bottles from Dover N.H., as well as period bottles that were found or recovered from the local rivers and lakes. The bottles and shards that I lent to the museum for the year were blown mostly in New England and used and sold by local merchants in Dover.

They include several specimens blown at the old Stoddard Glass Works in Stoddard, N.H. The bottles I selected to display in the central case in the museum show a timeline of blown glass bottles, with the earliest dating to the late 18th century, continuing up to the early 20th century, when the advent of bottle-making machines refined the quality and consistency of the bottles as they were manufactured in greater numbers.

As the museum guests travel from one end of the glass case to the other, it offers a clear, visual example of shards and bottles that were made by hand, one at a time, by glassblowers in small log structures along a mill river in N.H. It ends with machine-made bottles, featuring crisp, clean colors and very few imperfections.

When viewed through the eyes of a collector, the appeal of the early, crudely made bottles is well apparent. The glass is filled with impurities, whittle marks and even little grains of sand, with uneven and warped lips.

The exhibit also shows the products and potions used by the people who lived in the historical buildings around the town, of which there are many: old ink bottles; bitters and elixirs; cures for diseases of all kinds; as well as whiskey and soda bottles.

The entire museum is a hidden local treasure. The main building is a three-story brick residence built in 1818. It houses an amazing mineral collection, Indian artifacts, military and animal exhibits, as well as the previously mentioned Lincoln Saddle. It is open 12:30-4:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, and is located at 182 Central Avenue in Dover, N.H. It is well worth the price of admission, as it offers something of interest to everyone.

Bram Hepburn collects 19th-century New England bottles and glass, having spent the last 30 years digging and diving for bottles in New England and upstate New York. He lives in Eliot, Maine.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

Over 26 letters were found in a home in York, ME, corresponding between a soldier in the Civil War and his family. Scanned copies of this letters will be posted soon for those who are interested!

The letter on the right included a ticket to the Maine State Fair, 1880.