Ran across this in the recent Lost Treasure newsletter and thought I'd share it here.
History in the Pits
A lowly trash heap in McKeesport transformed Tim Tokosh into an obsessed urban archaeologist driven to collect rare, antique bottles brimming with 150 years of the region's history.
Rain had carved ravines into the piles of dirt and trash, exposing hand-blown glass bottles of strange shapes, hues and brands that inspired Tokosh in 1987 to begin a quest for rare bottles that tell the histories of medicines, liquors, poisons and even famous products such as those made by H.J. Heinz Co.
To grow his cache of bottles beyond those of armchair collectors, Tokosh, 40, turned to one of the only places to discover old bottles: long-buried outhouse pits - or privy holes, as collectors call them.
Tokosh, a contractor from Elizabeth Township, has pulled more than 100,000 antique bottles from the depths of 19th century outhouses - often in the backyards of Pittsburgh homeowners who live in the city's oldest neighborhoods.
"They're digging out old outhouses, for crying out loud," said Bruce Thompson, 40, a Mexican War Streets resident who allowed Tokosh's four-person team to dig a 40-foot hole in his backyard - by hand. "We kind of eyeballed them for a while, but eventually it made sense. I had no idea (an outhouse) was back there."
Thompson and Jana Carstensen, 40, live in a two-story home built in the mid-1850s - a prime period for collectors for two reasons: There was no trash collection 150 years ago; and the only place to dispose of soda, medicine or liquor bottles -- or hide them from a spouse - was the privy.
Most homeowners allow him to dig, "just out of sheer curiosity," Tokosh said.
That's what drives him.
"We love the thrill of the hunt. Each time we dig a site we don't know what's there. That's exciting to us."
Tokosh wows party guests with tales of bizarre turn-of-the-century tinctures such as McMun's Elixir of Opium or the infamous Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup.
"That was made to help babies during teething, but it was killing them. The mothers would keep feeding this to them because of the morphine in it, and the mothers got hooked on it, too. It's amazing what people did back then," Tokosh said.
One prized find is an aqua-colored Heinz horseradish bottle from 1869. The embossed label says "H. Heinz - Sharpsburg, Pa.," predating Henry John Heinz's move to the city of Allegheny with partner L.C. Noble in the early 1870s. Horseradish, not ketchup, was Heinz's first product. Pittsburgh absorbed Allegheny, now known as the North Side, in 1906.
Tokosh says his bottles overflow with history lessons.
"One of my best bottles is a drugstore bottle from Laughlin and Buschfield, of Wheeling, Va.," Tokosh said. "It had to be from before 1863, because that's the year the state split into West Virginia."
The relic came from a hole he dug in early 2005 at the former Greyhound bus station downtown. That demolition site was a gold mine of bottles, with as many as 200 from the mid-1800's in each hole.
Those types of Civil War-era finds keep Tokosh digging. His girlfriend, Nancy, supports his hobby and sometimes helps on digs. The value of antique bottles runs from 50 cents for medicine bottles to rare whiskey flasks worth more than $1,000.
"We are not in this for the money. If we were, we'd be living under a bridge," he said.
Carstensen and Thompson are glad they allowed Tokosh to dig behind their home. The dig netted a few bottles, some of which Tokosh gave to the couple.
They marvel at the collector's tenacity.
"He was down there for 13 hours in the hole," Thompson said. "We sent him down lunch. We put it in a plastic bowl and lowered it in a bucket. It wasn't until 9:30 p.m. before they started filling it in, and they didn't get done until midnight."
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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,1966.msg16921.html#msg16921
Stringfrenzy
