Tag: collecting

On genies and rabbit holes

I love all kinds of treasure / scavenger hunting. My earliest memory of treasure hunting is from when I was six or seven: at summer camp in Colorado we went out looking for arrowheads and fossils. I never found anything “big,” but I found enough to stay interested all afternoon. Since then, whether it’s finding money on the street or hitting an auction or garage sale hoping for that long lost copy of the Declaration of Independence, I still enjoy it. I suppose it’s part of my enjoyment of hashing, and even playing slot machines when I have the chance… Maybe you’ll strike it rich by coming across something nobody else saw.

Last evening I got over to our local thrift shop, where I’ve found several fun and useful things before. I was actually looking for a cassette player, but that’s another story. No tape player, but these pretty old bottles caught my eye, part of a larger collection. For $1 apiece, hard to go wrong. They are all worth more than a buck, it turns out, but none worth more than $10… From a treasure hunt perspective, a big score by my low standards, but I’ll still report to work on Monday.

And so to the rabbit hole: bottle collecting. Like a lot of nerdy (as in “someone who cares about the details”) hobbies, I totally get why this would be fascinating. Luckily, I also get why it wouldn’t stay fascinating to one’s friends and family, and so I’ve been able to stay married and pursue non-collector friendships.

My bottles may not have much value, but they all have history, and somebody has already written much of it out and put it on the Internet. Next time you have a quiet moment, I dare you not to get caught up in the story of Moses Atwood’s Jaundice Bitters (the one on the left), of bottle collecting, of how glass is made, and why it turns blue over time…