Another Great 49er Bottle Show

The 49er Bottle Clubs 32nd annual bottle show and sale kicked off Friday at noon sharp. A big turnout of early lookers, and early buyers, stormed the doors looking for bargains on bottles, insulators and collectibles. The first few hours of the show sales were brisk and dealers kept busy selling items and answering questions about their merchandise. The sales action continued all day Friday and dealers commented on how well items were selling.
( Click on the pictures to enlarge them)

On Saturday morning a Turner's "Shootout" was held with collectors Richard Siri, Bill Ham, Steve Hubbell, Ken Edward and Rick Simi displaying 7 different variants of the Turner Brothers Forest Wine Bitters bottle. Smooth base and iron pontiled examples, including an extremely rare iron pontil aqua variant, were discussed, compared and photographed by several collectors.

In the last few years western bottle shows have been suffering from items being stolen from dealers tables. The ongoing theft problem was addressed very well by the club, announcements about every hour warning dealers to watch their tables and keep track of their sales items were very helpful and reminded dealers that the 49er club was "aware" of the stolen merchandise problem.

I was pleased to get a chance to talk to collectors & dealers from Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wisconsin and Texas and meet a few collectors "face to face" for the first time.

Western bitters that changed hands during the two day event included: a pea green Cundurango, A.H. Powers Dr. Mott's Wild Cherry Tonic in light yellow amber with an applied top, a very crude aqua Cundurango, another Cundurango in a yellow olive, an N.B. Jacob's San Francisco in grass green, a variant 1 Rosenbaums Bitters, an Alex Von Humboldt's Stomach Bitters in light old amber and an Alpine Herb Bitters with an applied top; a tremendous amount of western bitters available for one show. I also noticed 4 different large letter Dr. Renz's Herb Bitters and a large letter Rosenbaums for sale.

The 49er Historical Bottle Association refers to their annual show as "The Best in the West" and in this old collectors opinion have earned the right to call it so. I, personally, would like to thank the staff and members of the 49er Historical Bottle Association for putting on another great bottle show.

Thanks!