part of my bottle collection. these were all extracted from the depths of the richmond river - ballina, far north coast of nsw.
mate and i went diving in the river just to get wet and started finding bottles, then we got the bug. as we both had a small business, opportunities to dive were slim but we found the time , and bottles!!
(http://i60.tinypic.com/rcssjk.jpg)
the 'skittle' has , in coin speak, die cracks all over
(http://i58.tinypic.com/2r6co76.jpg)
"Bottler". :good: Those in the 'know' also keep the locations of old rubbish tips a closely guarded secret.!
Bottle finding was a good pastime for gold prospectors as well. I didn't find any bottles but I did find some gold.........
looks like they show up in better nick for having been under water than buried in dirt
top bottles
we are convinced that we have a captain cook bottle that was washed up on the beach in cooktown!
we did need to clean most of them that were shell encrusted - in a bucket of battery acid !!! then a wipe of olive oil to make them sparkle ..
others were just buried in sand and clean as the the day were dumped 150 years ago !
in that case, some before pics would be good to see
worlds away from the coin cringe about cleaning!
my son bought me a similar looking blue bottle for chrissy a few years ago
they are lovely
I think that I remember something about there being a certain mineral or chemical in the glass and the blue goes darker if exposed to the sunlight (?)
I can see several that look very hand made
great bottles