Digging For Old Bottles
A Beginners Guide
You can choose to embrace the great outdoors in search of hidden treasure (many bottle-diggers go out in all weathers!)
You certainly don’t require any expensive equipment or machinery to get started (maybe just a fork, shovel, strong boots and protective gear including tough gloves) it’s just a question of where to start looking?
Quite often joining various bottle clubs or forum groups can lead to meeting like-minded people and subscribing to specialised bottle magazines or a visit to the local library in search of books can lead to learning about looking for the right signs of previous dumping, obtaining permission (a must!), what to keep and what to dispose of/leave, washing your prized finds, finding somewhere suitable to display it all, travelling to various bottle shows dotted all over the UK (and abroad) may help with display ideas and a way of adding to your collection
Values
Maybe have a look back at our past auction catalogues to gauge a rough idea of values and what items are worth taking home, although the best way to learn is through mistakes, we all have to start somewhere!
I started digging in 1976 and ever since have travelled the length and breadth of Britain in search for new sites. It’s incredibly rewarding and 95% of my collection comprises of the better items I have dug over the years. Each item a reminder of the hard slog but also the euphoric feeling you have when when you find a real gem.
I’ve also been part of a professional group ‘Phoenix Heritage’ and negotiated with various councils and landowners over the years for permissions to excavate various sites with a mechanical digger and have numerous glowing references. Several of these sites had been hand dug illegally and the resultant mess and potential danger allowed us permission to extract all items of interest and reinstate the land often in a far better condition than before and helped irradicate any nuisance issue.
Digging with permission with machine or by hand is far more rewarding and unlike treasure hunting/metal detecting, quite often the landowners have little or no interest in the finds so negates the need for any 50/50 split. It is also crucial to leave sites without any mess