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Antique Bottles
Within the relatively short span of twenty years, collecting early American bottles and flasks has grown from a hobby enjoyed by a few to one followed by people of all ages and pursuits. If any object can be said to have charisma, it must indeed be the old bottle. Collectors of these pieces of glass currently number well in the hundreds of thousands, with new hobbiest appearing daily.
Ask the average collector why he collects what he does, and he will probably say it's because he finds it fun or interesting, relaxing or exciting. Ask the uninitiated, "why collect such lowly things as bottles made from so common a material as glass?" The answer to this was summed up by the renowned collector of early American glass and historical flasks, Crawford WettJaufer, when he said about his collecting that he sought "the extraordinary in the ordinary." In old glass antique bottles can be found those characteristics which makes them still desirable today.
An old bottle has age. Most of the bottles sought today were made before the introduction of the automatic bottle-making machine. Rarity and excellence of condition, attributes important in all realms of collecting, are no less so here. The law of supply and demand decrees that rarity creates desirability and value, as long as the rare bottle is desired by a sufficient number of collectors. And, that number is growing.
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