Two dozen Warranted Whiskey Flasks in tight formation.
We love it when get house calls like this. Old estate: house, barns and outbuildings, come check it out. Lo and behold, we walked in and discovered boxes and boxes of old bottles. They were all dug up from the Ashokan reservoir back in the day.
Local Catskills bottles from Kingston, Saugerties, Hudson, New Paltz and Roundout.
The Ashokan is located where nine entire villages of almost 2,000 people used to exist, including Shokan, Olivebridge, and Brown’s Station. By 1914 all of the residents had been displaced, and their villages – houses, churches, shops – were flooded. When the tide is low you can still see the old foundations from the ghost towns.
A colorful array.
We used to dig bottles in the woods when we came up to the family cabin in the summer as a kid, and that’s a bug you never shake. So we were thrilled to be digging around in this barn, and took several boxes-ful for the Mystery Spot.
Before the bottle-washing marathon.
All in all we bought several hundred bottles, including canning jars, old patent medicine bottles, insulators, whiskey bottles, beer bottles and lord knows what else.
Old glass insulators, full of bubbles.
We’re still going through them all. We doubt any of them have any significant value, but we’re just happy to look at them all day.
The teeny-tinies.
We hope to have some out on the Mystery Spot Antiques shelves by this weekend. Come to Phoenicia and check ‘em out!