Do you hunt for free vintage artifacts?

[Brinybay]

There are three methods that I'm aware of to do this. One is using a metal detector to scan beaches and old homesteads or historic sites. Another is what is called "privy-digging", digging up old outhouses or old garbage dumps to search for antique bottles and other artifacts. Here's one of many sites you can find online to get the idea: Scott's Privy Page

The third method, the one I sometimes use, is searching underwater using scuba gear. My primary purpose for diving is recreation, not artifact hunting, so I don't spend a lot of time researching potential places to look.

But the idea of finding vintage artifacts while diving always keeps me on the look out. On a couple of occasions I've discovered vintage bottles. I have about a dozen old round dairy bottles in quart and pint sizes, all found at one site, along with a few liquor and pop bottles found at the same site. Here are a few. A couple of them have the embossed labeling that is part of the bottle. I researched these and can date them from no later than the 1930s. That's when they stopped doing the embossed type of labeling on dairy bottles.

What type of method do you use? What have you found?

 

[KY Gentleman]

Another is what is called "privy-digging", digging up old outhouses to search for antique bottles or other artifacts.

I've read about "privy digging" from around here and its wild what can be found in these old outhouse sites! I grew up near some Southern Railway RR tracks and I found a number of bottles and other interesting things along the tracks in the woods. I guess old time litter bugs threw some neat stuff out of train cars!

 

[Vintage Betty]

My home has a 1930's-1960's private dump (romantic, I know) and very typical for the period.

It's currently under some dirt. A worker covered it without asking us, and we will have to unearth it to remove all the dangerous trash which is not good for the local animals.

When I tried to clean it, I found some bottles and an old inkwell, and some mass market beauty jars and an old soda bottle or two. It's a huge project and will probably take an entire summer if I worked a bit every day.

Nothing special, but an interesting capsule of someone else's life.

Vintage Betty

 

[Brinybay]

I've read about "privy digging" from around here and its wild what can be found in these old outhouse sites! I grew up near some Southern Railway RR tracks and I found a number of bottles and other interesting things along the tracks in the woods. I guess old time litter bugs threw some neat stuff out of train cars!

They did that from boats too. There was a guy here in Seattle (who has sinced passed away) who used to go out in Lake Washington and dive along the paths of the old ferries. He had a houseful of artifacts, everything from tokens, coins, zippo lighters, anchors. He even found an old French bidet one time. He didn't know what it was, he thought it was a toilet until he got it to the surface and someone explained to him what a bidet was. I remember relating that story to my Dad once, and he asked "What's a bidet?" I had to explain the facts of life to that old country boy. He thought the entire idea of a bidet was ridiculously funny.

 

[Brinybay]

My home has a 1930's-1960's private dump (romantic, I know) and very typical for the period.

It's currently under some dirt. A worker covered it without asking us, and we will have to unearth it to remove all the dangerous trash which is not good for the local animals.

When I tried to clean it, I found some bottles and an old inkwell, and some mass market beauty jars and an old soda bottle or two. It's a huge project and will probably take an entire summer if I worked a bit every day.

Nothing special, but an interesting capsule of someone else's life.

Vintage Betty

It's not uncommon for privy-diggers to offer to do the digging and excavating for you in exchange for splitting the find, property owner getting first pick. You may want to check into that if you don't want to do the digging yourself. In your case, the really good stuff will be at the bottom.

 

[JEEP]

Everywhere on the property of my parent's farm you can find small garbage dumps dating from around 1920-1975. My parents has a huge collection of bottles and porcelain from that period. Actually they have been talking about disposing of it, maybe I should save the "treasures" among them before they are recycled


/Jakob

 

[LizzieMaine]

My great-grandparents used to throw their garbage into a gully behind their house, and when I was a youngster I used to poke around there a lot looking for interesting rubbish. They'd lived in the house from 1902 to 1952, so there were tons of Golden Era relics there for the digging -- for some reason, Listerine bottles were the most common item, but I'd also find the occasional lead toothpaste or shaving-cream tube, pieces of broken crockery, bent silverware, shoe soles, and on one occasion, the jawbone of a horse. (That find spooked me, and I didn't go back to the gully for quite a while after!)

 

[scotrace]

When we built a tool shed in the backyard a few years ago, digging for the foundation revealed a huge trash pit that seemed to date to around 1900-1920. We had to stop digging as it was becoming too large a project, but much of it was just under the surface. Lots of bottles (early Moxie mostly), broken pots (some of which, had they been whole, would have been very beautiful), rusted toys, shoes, an inkwell, and match holder (which has been used for fireplace matches ever since). We were amazed! But I suppose every house of a certain age in every town will have a trash/privy pit on the property somewhere. There would also have been a barn for every house, right?

 

[DblCoronaMS]

Once while scuba diving with a friend in a large public pond/swimming hole I found a leopard print bikini top. I maintain to this day that we found indesputable evidence of the existance of mermaids. No bottoms... just the top.

I'd rather find her than the Loch Ness Monster!

 

[Twitch]

Well garbage dumps are the places where archeologists usually look for all the bits and pieces a society that lived there used.[huh]

 

[Atticus Finch]

Do you hunt for free vintage artifacts?

I used to when I was younger. I live near two Civil War battlegrounds. New Bern and Wyse Fork are both within a dozen miles of my home.

Here are some Civil War things that I've either found or recieved as a gifts. Please note the North Carolina "Sunburst" button. It was lost from some Confederate officer's topcoat at the Battle of Wyse Fork. The other buttons are from Yankee uniforms.

I also used to be an avid scuba diver. I've dragged all kinds of worthless junk up from the bottom of the Atlantic. Most of it is still sits rusting at my parents' house. This is a .303 round that I took from the wreck of the Senator Duhamel, a British gunboat that was sunk off Cape Lookout during the battle of the Atlantic.

Atticus

 

[reetpleat]

My home has a 1930's-1960's private dump (romantic, I know) and very typical for the period.

It's currently under some dirt. A worker covered it without asking us, and we will have to unearth it to remove all the dangerous trash which is not good for the local animals.

When I tried to clean it, I found some bottles and an old inkwell, and some mass market beauty jars and an old soda bottle or two. It's a huge project and will probably take an entire summer if I worked a bit every day.

Nothing special, but an interesting capsule of someone else's life.

Vintage Betty

Try to convince an archeology department at the local ocllege that it is a rare site rich with fantastic artifacts, and then generously grant them permission to excavate. Donate all the trash you found tothe college and take a huge write off.

 

[Sweet Leilani]

We have several dump sites around our cabin in Northern PA that I scour regularly. Mostly I find old soda bottles and galvanized sap buckets, and occaisionally some enamel kitchen ware and the like. Once I found an old mailbox that would hang on your front door. I recycle a lot of my finds as planters- galvanized buckets and enamel pots being my favorites.

 

[Feng_Li]

I help my grandmother clean her house...

 

[dhermann1]

Some time around 1930 a couple of boarding houses in Chautauqua burned down clearing the whole block. They carted the debris away and left it a park. The debris was hauled to the lake side, and used as land fill to extend the shore line. As a kid I discoverd that if you scratch the dirt along that shore line all sorts of interesting things crumble out. Mainly there are melted glass bottles, blue ones like Bromo Seltzer, etc., and clear ones. They're melted flat, so it must have been one heck of a fire. I've also found porcelain cream pitchers.
Some of my farmer friends back home used to regularly find Indian arrow heads while plowing fields. Some of them had nice collections.

 

[scotrace]

Amazing finds and a great collection. The number of Mini?© balls that got dropped or fell in trajectory that are still out there is amazing. Thanks for the pictures.

 

[Leutnant]

One of my best finds was in the Detroit River, an unopened, drinkable bottle of Prohibition Whiskey. The Purple Gang in Detroit used to smuggle it across the River and supply Capone in Chicago, when the police would approach they would put it overboard. If they were unlucky enough to get caught by the police they would be arrested and their boat sunk on the spot (found some of them too). I wrote to Canadian Club (based in Windsor) and their historian identified the bottle as being a 1921 bottle of Gooderham and Wortz Whiskey. My brother and I have a shot every Christmas and I'll tell you what, it's smooth...

 

[jamespowers]

Gee, several of you have had a bit more luck than I had with my trash pile digging. At my first house, I knew who the original owner of the land was so it made sense to find a trash pile when digging a hole for my apple tree in the backyard.
It consisted of old square headed nails, paper (yes, believe it or not it lasted that long), an empty fifth, several other bottles including an old Antrol bottle and bluing.
I thought that was about it and filled in the whole. The problem was that an area in my garden never grew tomatoes very well in a very specific spot. Tilling it one year made me understand why. About five feet down was a void and a ten gallon oil drum! I dug for over an hour to get the damned thing out whole. It rusted away in my garden as a trophy.
The house I live in now just turns up broken pieces of glass once in a while when I am planting my garden.

Regards,

J

 

[RetroToday]

One of my best finds was in the Detroit River, an unopened, drinkable bottle of Prohibition Whiskey. The Purple Gang in Detroit used to smuggle it across the River and supply Capone in Chicago, when the police would approach they would put it overboard. If they were unlucky enough to get caught by the police they would be arrested and their boat sunk on the spot (found some of them too). I wrote to Canadian Club (based in Windsor) and their historian identified the bottle as being a 1921 bottle of Gooderham and Wortz Whiskey. My brother and I have a shot every Christmas and I'll tell you what, it's smooth...

Very Cool!!! :eusa_clap

I live in Toronto and am quite into the history of the area. Gooderham & Worts was established here in the 1830s. In the late 1990s I would lurk around the abandoned distillery buildings, taking photos and wondering if they were ever going to restore those beautiful structures. And they did a few years back!

Now called "The Distillery" historic district, it plays host to many retailers, artists and they hold big events there year round. A lot of the old distilling equipment is still scattered around the place. http://www.distilleryheritage.com/

A man named Harry Hatch took over the distillery in the 1920s.
When prohibition came into being they still made "medicinal" alcohol and a lot of other dodgey products...

Look into the history of the Hamilton bootlegger Rocco Perri, he had a lot to do with the smuggling of liguor into the USA from here smuggled by the railways, boats and in cars.
Perri was also responsible for many deaths in the early 1930s when a bad batch of his alcohol spread across southern Ontario and into the States. Turned out that too much of the wood alcohol he used to thin out the liquor was added, if the drinkers of it didn't die, they went blind.

I'd love to see a picture of the bottle you found, again, very cool find!

 

[Story]

I'm a shameless trashpicker (oldest score was a 1902 European export model Victor Victrola box and parts). You need good peripheral vision.

You try outrunning trashtrucks on a mountain bike.