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Here's a pretty good story about a guy who finds antique beer bottles, makes coffee tables out of stained glass windows, authored a book, etc. Shoot, he would fit right in on thunting.com. Sue
Angels man has hobby that's all bottled up
By ABBE SMITH
The Union Democrat
. . . . The best places to rummage around for goods? Abandoned dumps and, believe it or not, old outhouses.
"People would throw out their treasures," Byron Martin says in amazement.
In such places he's found old poison bottles, whiskey bottles, medicine containers, dolls, coins, dishes and a lot of Chinese ornamental items.
On the couple's first treasure-hunting trip, Martin left the digging to Vicky and he went out shooting with two of his sons.
"I didn't give a crap about digging," he says.
When he returned from shooting, Vicky had dug up a number of old tobacco tins. The tins turned out to be full of old and, it turned out, very valuable stamps from the early 1900s.
"That's when I started digging," Martin laughed.
They brought the stamps back to their home in Northridge for safekeeping. When a dryer caught on fire and a contractor was brought in to do repairs, Vicky showed him her stamp collection.
The contractor offered Vicky $100 for the stamps and she accepted.
"He never came back again to work," Martin said of the contractor. "We figured he retired down in Mexico."
The thing that makes an old beer bottle special is its embossing. "A bottle with embossing on it tells a story," he said.
His collection of about 400 beer bottles from all over California sold in 1989 for $32,000.
The friend who bought it was later offered $20,000 for just one bottle from the collection. Naturally, he turned it down.
"It's the only one known," Martin said of the 1880s M. Kreiss Pioneer Brewery bottle. A picture of the bottle appears in Martin's book. Writing embossed on the bottle reads: "This bottle must not be sold."
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« Last Edit: January 04, 2007, 11:43:17 pm by Sweet Sue »
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