Dating old bottles

How to Date Your Vintage Whiskey

Estimating the age of antique bottles can sometimes be a difficult task even for the experienced collector. However, by following some basic guidelines anyone can determine approximate age. Although this brief article is primarily intended for American-made bottles, glass from other countries has evolved similarly. This outline covers basic patterns but note that there are exceptions to every rule. Most bottles produced in the past years were formed by blowing molten glass into a mold. Molds were made of iron or wood and consist of 2 or 3 pieces. When the bottle was removed from a mold, a faint seam remained in the glass, running from the base to a point somewhere between the shoulder on up to the top edge of the mouth. In a 3-piece mold, a seam often runs horizontally around the shoulder of the bottle with opposing seams on the neck. To some extent, the height of the mold seam on the bottle can indicate age.

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As Berge noted in referring to bottles, the " This bottle dating "key" is a relatively simple "first cut" on the dating of a bottle. Please be aware that in order to gain the maximum information about any particular bottle e. Unfortunately, the complexities of precisely dating bottles is beyond the scope of any simple key; more complex keys are far in the future if they ever become available. A substantial amount of bottle type specific information must be reviewed by a user to increase the probability of dating accuracy. Additional reference materials outside of this website must usually be consulted to narrow down the date of any item as far as is possible and to really get a "feel" for the history of the bottle in question. Fortunately, as each year passes more of this type information becomes available on the internet.

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Most bottle manufacturers molded the year into the glass at the bottom of the bottle in 2-digit format. This will usually tell you—within a year or two—when the whiskey was bottled. You can find a list of permit numbers as of here. Most bourbons and ryes had a tax strip seal over the cap up through

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Help needed re identification & dating

Accurate dating of Australian Glass bottles can be a tedious task. Some research has been completed to this stage and I'd like to thank all those hardened researches for their time and dedication in painstakingly searching through archival documentation and long lost records, your contribution and wiliness to share goes unsurpassed. I'm sure a fuller story shall be written as public records become more assessable on the internet through the larger sites like Trove, State Libraries and Museums by the means of media, newspapers, old photos, magazines and articles.

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