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An Odd Swag Idea, What Do You Think?


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Along with caching and other hobbies and interests, I really enjoy digging up antique bottles. I end up with household products and medicine bottles by the hundreds, most of them can fit in the palm of your hand. Some of these bottles are near a century old. People who visit my home comment on the neat bottles I always have around the house. I typically send them home with the ones they like.

 

Now if I were to wrap a 75 year old bottle in paper, put it in a ziploc with a paper explaining the origin and age of the bottle and maybe a copy of a vintage ad for the item, would this be considered swag you would find interesting to find? I am a firm enemy of trash in caches, I don't consider these to be common trash.

 

What is your opinion??

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If i saw it in a cache, with all that detail about the bottle, i'd defo take it and be very pleased with it :laughing: but then i think you'd have to make sure there's no way the bottle will break, in cases like when the cache gets dropped etc... maybe bubble wrap them?

 

the question is though, if you collect them, how can you bare to let them go!!

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My only worry would be whether I had something cool enough to justify taking one! :laughing:

 

Agreed, I'd feel like a total heel for leaving a mechwarrior miniature in its place but I'd take it anyway. Then it would go in my collection of A#1 things I've found in caches ...... you know, with all my yellow & WJTB's :laughing:

 

Your OP implies these are easy to find if you know where to dig ..... then the obvious question is how do you know where to dig?

Edited by IGJoe
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depends on the product the bottle once contained - whether there is interest besides being an old bottle. I do collect old beer bottles, and would grab one of those posthaste - but I would not turn down a neat honey bottle or a patent medicine with amusing label claims

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Along with caching and other hobbies and interests, I really enjoy digging up antique bottles. I end up with household products and medicine bottles by the hundreds, most of them can fit in the palm of your hand. Some of these bottles are near a century old. People who visit my home comment on the neat bottles I always have around the house. I typically send them home with the ones they like.

 

Now if I were to wrap a 75 year old bottle in paper, put it in a ziploc with a paper explaining the origin and age of the bottle and maybe a copy of a vintage ad for the item, would this be considered swag you would find interesting to find? I am a firm enemy of trash in caches, I don't consider these to be common trash.

 

What is your opinion??

I would love to find something like that in a cache. Unfortunately, I doubt if I would be packing anything around even close to the same value to leave in its place. Maybe you could "pardon" the cacher who took it somehow.

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I think it sounds like a good idea, too, but I want to second the bubblewrap idea. Granted, the bottles in question survived 90+ years in the ground, being used, etc... but my luck would be I'd find one, trade for it, get it home, and discover that when I accidentally dropped my pack at the cache after.. I broke it or something..

 

Bubblewrap it!

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My only worry would be whether I had something cool enough to justify taking one! :D

 

Agreed, I'd feel like a total heel for leaving a mechwarrior miniature in its place but I'd take it anyway. Then it would go in my collection of A#1 things I've found in caches ...... you know, with all my yellow & WJTB's :D

 

Your OP implies these are easy to find if you know where to dig ..... then the obvious question is how do you know where to dig?

 

Yes I would also like to know how you know where is the place to dig. I have a ton of really old soda bottles at my parents house that I dug up when I was a kid. Turns out my 'Fort' was built on the familys old garbage dump. Made for interesting excavations.

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Well it seems I have an overwhelmingly positive response, I thought I may get some resistance on this. Thanks very much to everyone who has responded.

 

In answer to some questions posted:

 

1. I am really not concerned with what gets traded for one of my bottles. The concern stated here about not having a worthy trade item is something sorely lacking in the game these days. I do genuinely wish that it inspires some cachers to reconsider some of the marginal items that I have been finding recently. I just want to improve the cache with my trade. (Marginal, how's that for diplomatic)

 

2. Unfortunately nothing from Barbour County WV. I'm a liitle too far north.

 

3. Colorado Cacher, Poison with skull and crossbones?? This is ultimately only a game ya know!!! :laughing::)

 

4. How do you find where to dig? In the first half of the twentieth century, if it was liquid, it was in glass. Urban areas had city dumps to get rid of it all, but the rural folks had to dispose of it best they could, typically in a dump on a farm, or a dump used by a number of families in a rural community. Alot of them went down the privy hole and were buried. Personally, I would never touch another bottle if I had to dig 20 feet down an old outhouse hole to find them. Talk to some of your local old timers, I bet they remember where they were disposed of, maybe took a couple barrow loads there themselves.

 

Thanks again all

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