Bottle & Dump Digging

Bottle and Dump Digging — Before municipal garbage collection existed, households buried everything — medicine bottles, ink wells, stoneware crocks, ceramic figures — in privy pits, ash dumps, and cellar fills behind their homes. Sealed underground for a century or more, these deposits preserve antique glass in remarkable condition, often still bearing the embossed names of local druggists, soda bottlers, and patent medicine companies long since vanished. Bottle digging is as much research as excavation. Identifying likely properties through city directories, Sanborn maps, and county records is half the hobby — a well-researched privy from an 1870s property can yield pontil-base medicines, blob-top sodas, and figural bitters worth hundreds of dollars to collectors. Like all forms of treasure hunting, this means landowner permission, respect for the property, and leaving every site cleaner than you found it. The community is active and generous with knowledge — the best finds and the best guidance both come from time spent in the forums.