Ever think of collecting milk bottles? You'll need some room, but if you're short on that they do come in pint and half pint sizes The dairy business was always competitive, and this makes Milk bottles fun to collect - Many come in bright pyro colors with great advertisements, poems,slogans, and pictures.
Many milk bottles are found by diggers.
Sometimes they find them by accident when they're looking for other things and sometimes they just know where to look.
Old farms sometimes had their own family dumps and, when the government began regulating dumping, they just covered them up.
Often these can be find down by rivers or a place on the property that was useless for grazing or growing.
A good way to begin collecting is to search the Internet for Milk bottles in general and then narrow down your searches to those you find interesting.
Milk bottle collectors are most interested in bottles that are either embossed or pyroglazed that have the name of the dairy on them.
These were delivered to the home and, because competition between farmers was often fierce, the pyros are especially wonderful examples of advertising.
Dairies used comical pictures, often of babies, to make their milk sound better.
Dairies would advertise that their milk was tuberculin tested because of fears of contaminated milk.
Red and orange are common colors, but there are a variety of other pyro colors found on milk bottles.
Value is determined by the color, picture and dairy.
It's fun to collect milk bottles.
Many collectors focus on their home town or another area they like.
Others collect rare bottles, or bottles of a certain kind The New York Dairy Company had been given the credit of making the first factory milk bottles.
The first patent for a Milk Container is the Lester Milk Jar, Jan 29, 1878 which you are probably not going to find since there are only 5 known bottles out there.
The first patent for a glass milk bottle with a small glass tin clipped lid was March 23, 1880.
Thatcher Mfg.
Co.
made the first cap seat bottle which made milk bottles reusable c.
1900.
Therefore, most milk bottles you will see created after 1900 will have cap seats.
Milk was not always as we know it.
Before homogenization, which is the separation of the cream from the milk, dairies sought a way to offer easy separation by the customer.
Pouring the cream off from a regular milk bottle caused most of it to mix in with the milk.
The invention of the cream top bottle allowed for easier separation.
There were also a number of devices sold to aid in this separation.
Before milk was homogenized the cream would rise to the top of the milk bottle.
Consumers would want to pour the cream off but in a conventional milk bottle the milk would just mix with the cream as it was poured out.
Thus there was a lot of interest in designing a milk bottle that would allow one to remove the cream without mixing it with the milk.
Cream Top milk bottles are easy to distinguish.
They have a bulb as the neck area that has a smaller opening between the rest of the bottle than at the lip.
The cream rises to the top and then people would use either a special spoon or separator to close off the neck between the cream and the milk.
This way the cream could be poured out and the milk left in.
They are found in half pint, pin and quart sizes.
These bottles can be either embossed or pyro and round or square.
Often the bulb itself was decorated.
Some of these cream top bottles, especially of interest to some collectors, are ones where the cream top is in the form of a baby's or a policeman's face.
The police bottles are called Cop Tops and often comes with slogans like "Cop the Cream.
" Milk bottles can be kind of slippery.
To make them pick up many of the old milk bottles had embossed lines, dots, etc.
on the necks.
The one on the left is raised dots (hobnail), the next is a crisscross pattern, third is one with vertical lines.
There are many other embossed patterns that were used for this purpose.
A WORD ABOUT FAKES:If you're going to collect milk bottles, you have to be on the lookout for reproductions.
Most reproductions will, of course, be of the more collectible bottles, like war slogans and disney.
If the bottle is pyro, take a good look at it.
Pyroglaze can fade and wear, but it never totally goes away and does not chip off like paint would.
So, look for signs of missing Pyro.
Keep in mind the above information about cap seats.
If someone is trying to sell you a bottle they say is from the mid 1800s and it has a cap seat, for instance, remember it wasn't invented until around 1900.
Check to see if the lips are machine made or applied.
Look for mold marks typically found on machine made bottles.
Check for date codes on the bottoms of most bottles to verify age.
Owens Illinois, for instance, made machine bottles and have an Diamond over a circle mark with an I in the middle - the plant # is on the left and the year on the right.
This gets a little more intricate as you go along - but that's the general idea.
Some companies before 1950 used a single digit and you have to figure out what the decade was by looking at the type of bottle you have.
If you're going to collect milk bottles - Take the family to a dairy some day.
Once you taste the fresh milk you'll see what all the moo moo is about.
Many milk bottles are found by diggers.
Sometimes they find them by accident when they're looking for other things and sometimes they just know where to look.
Old farms sometimes had their own family dumps and, when the government began regulating dumping, they just covered them up.
Often these can be find down by rivers or a place on the property that was useless for grazing or growing.
A good way to begin collecting is to search the Internet for Milk bottles in general and then narrow down your searches to those you find interesting.
Milk bottle collectors are most interested in bottles that are either embossed or pyroglazed that have the name of the dairy on them.
These were delivered to the home and, because competition between farmers was often fierce, the pyros are especially wonderful examples of advertising.
Dairies used comical pictures, often of babies, to make their milk sound better.
Dairies would advertise that their milk was tuberculin tested because of fears of contaminated milk.
Red and orange are common colors, but there are a variety of other pyro colors found on milk bottles.
Value is determined by the color, picture and dairy.
It's fun to collect milk bottles.
Many collectors focus on their home town or another area they like.
Others collect rare bottles, or bottles of a certain kind The New York Dairy Company had been given the credit of making the first factory milk bottles.
The first patent for a Milk Container is the Lester Milk Jar, Jan 29, 1878 which you are probably not going to find since there are only 5 known bottles out there.
The first patent for a glass milk bottle with a small glass tin clipped lid was March 23, 1880.
Thatcher Mfg.
Co.
made the first cap seat bottle which made milk bottles reusable c.
1900.
Therefore, most milk bottles you will see created after 1900 will have cap seats.
Milk was not always as we know it.
Before homogenization, which is the separation of the cream from the milk, dairies sought a way to offer easy separation by the customer.
Pouring the cream off from a regular milk bottle caused most of it to mix in with the milk.
The invention of the cream top bottle allowed for easier separation.
There were also a number of devices sold to aid in this separation.
Before milk was homogenized the cream would rise to the top of the milk bottle.
Consumers would want to pour the cream off but in a conventional milk bottle the milk would just mix with the cream as it was poured out.
Thus there was a lot of interest in designing a milk bottle that would allow one to remove the cream without mixing it with the milk.
Cream Top milk bottles are easy to distinguish.
They have a bulb as the neck area that has a smaller opening between the rest of the bottle than at the lip.
The cream rises to the top and then people would use either a special spoon or separator to close off the neck between the cream and the milk.
This way the cream could be poured out and the milk left in.
They are found in half pint, pin and quart sizes.
These bottles can be either embossed or pyro and round or square.
Often the bulb itself was decorated.
Some of these cream top bottles, especially of interest to some collectors, are ones where the cream top is in the form of a baby's or a policeman's face.
The police bottles are called Cop Tops and often comes with slogans like "Cop the Cream.
" Milk bottles can be kind of slippery.
To make them pick up many of the old milk bottles had embossed lines, dots, etc.
on the necks.
The one on the left is raised dots (hobnail), the next is a crisscross pattern, third is one with vertical lines.
There are many other embossed patterns that were used for this purpose.
A WORD ABOUT FAKES:If you're going to collect milk bottles, you have to be on the lookout for reproductions.
Most reproductions will, of course, be of the more collectible bottles, like war slogans and disney.
If the bottle is pyro, take a good look at it.
Pyroglaze can fade and wear, but it never totally goes away and does not chip off like paint would.
So, look for signs of missing Pyro.
Keep in mind the above information about cap seats.
If someone is trying to sell you a bottle they say is from the mid 1800s and it has a cap seat, for instance, remember it wasn't invented until around 1900.
Check to see if the lips are machine made or applied.
Look for mold marks typically found on machine made bottles.
Check for date codes on the bottoms of most bottles to verify age.
Owens Illinois, for instance, made machine bottles and have an Diamond over a circle mark with an I in the middle - the plant # is on the left and the year on the right.
This gets a little more intricate as you go along - but that's the general idea.
Some companies before 1950 used a single digit and you have to figure out what the decade was by looking at the type of bottle you have.
If you're going to collect milk bottles - Take the family to a dairy some day.
Once you taste the fresh milk you'll see what all the moo moo is about.