Antiques of any kinds are doggedly pursued by collectors, but in the case of antique glass bottles it’s a particularly voracious group. This is partly due to the fact that there are so many of them out there. There was a time when every company packaged their liquids in glass bottles and not all of them were destroyed. Thus the hunt is on for all kinds of glass bottle antiques. You can find antique glass oil bottles, antique glass milk bottles, antique glass perfume bottles, antique glass poison bottles, and more. An antique bottle can be a valuable thing so even if you’re not into collecting them you could still make some money selling them to collectors. Let’s talk about how to identify antique glass bottles.

There are signs you should look for in antique glass bottles. First, is the glass thick? If not, chances are good it was made much more recently when the need to make everything cheaply overtook the desire to do anything with a sense of quality, sadly. That makes it easier to identify the antiques though. Be sure to look at the base of the bottle. Almost anything produced in the 1900s or later features a smooth bottom with numbers, indicating a mass-produced nature. It’s hard for it to be an antique if it was produced by the thousand or million. If the bottom has a molten mark on the bottom that was placed there while it was still hot and the glass soft, that’s a sign it was hand blown and could very well be an antique. When looking to identify antique glass bottles you should also take a close look at the top of the bottle. Antique bottles are almost all handmade and weren’t made for screw on caps, but instead corks. If your bottle has those features it might be worth some money.

Antique blue glass bottles are some of the coolest because they were often used to carry poison. The cobalt blue color was a bright signifier of something dangerous so people wouldn’t make a disastrous mistake. Sometimes cleaning products were kept in them as they too were poisonous. If you’re really luck you’ll have an antique blue glass bottle with the word poison stamped right across the front. That’s a pretty sure sign it’s worth a little something and can fetch you a decent price if you want to sell. There’s a good market for these types of things and the rarer your bottle is the more you’ll get for it.

Antique glass beer bottles were all made from dark glass. That helped to shield the liquid from the effects of the sun and made it distinctive. That’s something that has stuck with modern beer makers, although they obviously don’t handcraft the bottles anymore. If you could get your hands on a genuine antique glass beer bottle from one of the big companies that was operating way back then you could certainly make a mint. An antique with name recognition is always going to draw attention and garner you a good sale.

Chances are good you won’t really have any idea if you have antique glass bottles in your possession. You could look at them all you want, but if you don’t have the requisite experience to know what you’re looking at then it won’t mean a thing. You need to turn to an expert to discover the real value. The internet is a good resource as you can take pictures and provide information to various experts and they’ll try to help. If you want more help with your antique glass bottles then you can go to an antiques flea market where there are bound to be numerous experts and folks willing to buy so you can kill two birds with one stone. If you’re in looking for antique glass bottles for sale a flea market would be a great place for you too. People are always selling their wares or looking to made trades so whatever you’re interested in they’ll have it. Antique glass perfume bottles tend to go for the most since they’re so intricately designed and beautiful. Have fun with your hobby!