Antique Soda Bottle - $6,251

Once again we were surprised at what we found. The bottle pictured here sold for $6,251 the other day. Before you think 'who would pay such an insane amount of money for a bottle, let's dive a little deeper into the history of it.

This bottle is an antique soda bottle from about mid-nineteenth century; it is over 150 years old! It was made by the company Gardner and Brown, as in Philip Gardner and Christopher Brown. The pair were in business together for only two years, running a mineral water manufcaturing facility in Baltimore. Thus, besides it being an old bottle, it is also rare since it was only produced between 1846 and 1849. On top of that, most of the samples found today are green, which makes this puce-colored bottle even more special.

The shape of the bottle is distinct, but not specific to these manufacturers. Many soda bottles of this age have this shape, referred to as the Torpedo shape. The aim of the design was to prevent bottles from being kept upright. Guess why? Well, in the early days of Soda bottling, a cork was used for closing the bottle. The cork had to stay moist to prevent shrinking, which would cause an imperfect seal. The simple solution to this problem was the design of a bottle that simply could not stand upright.

While looking up some information on antique bottles and bottle collecting, we were overwhelmed with the detailed information available on bottle collecting. Bottle collecting literally comes in all shapes and forms. People collect soda bottles, beer bottles, bitter bottles, pharmacy bottles, and so on, and items in this collecting niche can range from a couple of dollars to tens of thousands (!). If you don't know anything about antique bottles, you would walk right past that $ 5 garage sale item, worth a couple of thousand on the collector's market. Here is some information to get you started.

A very nice and detailed site we found is The Historic Glass Identification & Information website, maintained by U.S Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. This guide will keep you busy for a while! A collection of Baltimore bottles can be found here. Then there is Antiquebottles.com, which has extensive info on all kinds of antique bottles. Last but not least, a good bit of soda history can be found here. An extensive amount of books and price guidesis available online as well, go