Spring Finds #2 2021

At last summer's outdoor show in Upton Mass I picked up a scarce Walter Price & Co. Fruit Flavors. Most of Price's flavoring extract bottles say Price's Pure Preparation on the front.

A lead from many years ago finally panned out and I was able to see an epic collection of bottles dug in Newport in the 1970s. They had been picked through by the diggers, but there were still plenty of new bottles for my collection. Among a few sodas was a P. Sheehan Newport, RI.

One of the coolest bottles from this collection was an etched wine that has P. Faerber over P. Corbett Newport, RI. Either P. Corbett went out of business and Faerber re-used his bottles or Faerber simply stole one of his bottles! Either way I doubt I'll ever see another one!

I won a New England Bottling Co. Westerly, RI crown top off of ebay almost a year ago. I had planned to meet up with the seller but Covid scuttled those plans for some time. We were finally able to meet and my newest version joins the New England family. It is remarkably crude for a crown top!

Also acquired at the summer show was a small size Maltol medicine. I can't confirm it yet but I believe this is a RI medicine from Arctic. Quite a few have been dug in RI so this would seem to confirm that theory, as well as a shot glass from Charles Chagnon that says drink Maltox. Perhaps one or the other is misspelled?

 

Spring Finds #1 2021

A couple doing work on their house in East Greenwich uncovered a local pharmacy bottle, and an exciting one at that! They did not seem to care for it at all, but a friend of theirs persuaded them not to throw it in the trash (to my great relief), and posted a picture of it in a Facebook group. It was embossed People's Drug Store Greenwich, RI, a most exciting find as there is no record of a People's Drug store in East Greenwich, and the East part of the town's name is conspicuously absent. I was able to meet with the couple, and after telling them what I could about the bottle, they offered it to me even after I insisted on paying for it. Oh to be rich!

A return to the ACL soda dump yielded a Batchelors Bott Wks clear base embossed quart. I have one in aqua so this one makes a swell pair!

 

 

At one of the tailgate shows I picked up a box of mostly common RI sodas including a Lewis Ruhland & Co. Cranston crown top. My suspicions of never seeing this style with a crown top was correct, so now my Ruhland tribe consists of 8 versions!

Another beer in the lot as a Hand Brewing Co. Pawtucket, RI. It was a harder to find BIM version, and while I have two variants the embossing style was noticeably different. This one might be a little questionable to count as a new version but I'll consider it one for now!

A friend was digging at a well-dug dump and found a broken Price's Compound Tolu Syrup. An exceedingly rare patent medicine bottle from Westerly, it took me a second to realize that the listed version said Dr. Bush's while this one said Prices. He was kind enough to donate the placeholder example to the collection. I sure hope a fully intact version surfaces!