St. Pete Antique Bottle Club - St. Petersburg, Florida
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St. Pete Antique Bottle Club - St. Petersburg, Florida |
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I'm still working on this site so please have patience, I'm pretty close to being done. :) We are usually known as the St. Pete Antique Bottle Club (in St. Petersburg Florida), but our official name is Suncoast Antique Bottle Collector's Inc. Collecting antique bottles is a long time hobby for my husband & myself. It started out with what was a 50 cent cone ink bottle, and has evolved as our knowledge has grown. We read an article in the Bradenton Herald after we first moved to Florida, and found other antique bottle collectors! We ended up joining a club in Apollo Beach, and eventually it evolved into the club we belong to now. I am the Secretary and Newsletter Editor, and such as it is, the web page creator. If there's anything else that needs doing, I try to help out. As with life, there are some people that have more time then others, so I do what I can, when I can, right along side our other members. My husband was President of the club for about 8 or 9 years and even though the hobby was mine to begin with, he found it very interesting so the hobby has stuck with both of us since 1969. We meet the 4th Thursday of each month with a few exceptions, June, Nov., & Dec. Those months are subject to change. The location of the meeting is The Most Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church, 5800 15th Ave. S., Gulfport (that is west of Rt 19 and south of St. Pete). If you wish to inquire as to more about the club, or a particular meeting you would like to attend, please send us an email with your questions. Our February meeting is going to be held a a Glass Blowing Shop, as a matter of fact, the prizes that will be awarded at our show will be coming from there. It will be very interesting to watch this process in person! Every January we hold our annual show and for 2010 we had to make
a number of changes! Normally we hold a 3 day event for members, dealers and especially the public. But For January
2010 there were all sorts of changes! The Armory where we held it for so many years said they were not
accepting any contracts from October through February, so the first change was the location. Then we had to hunt
for a place large enough to accomodate the number of dealers we have had. Luckily for us, we found a place that will
hold about 40 more tables, but we had to change the show from 3 days to two days. (Two days being Day 1 for dealer set up &
Early Buyers and Day 2 for the general public). We were expecting over 160 tables this year, loaded with
all sorts of collectibles but mostly antique bottles. You might also find insulators, pottery, advertising items, jewelry,
fossils, stoneware, paper goods, and more.
We held our 41st annual show at the Manatee County Convention & Civic Center in Palmetto,
Florida and as of this change, it will be there in the future on the second weekend of January no matter the year. If
there are any changes I will post them here.
Antique bottle collecting is a great hobby that can also be tied into many
other hobbies or even your work! For instance, if you are a pharmacist, there are many drug store bottles to be had,
and many catagories of those.
You can collect bottles specific to a certain city, a certain state, a certain type of drug bottle, size, and/or color. The same goes if you like education--there is a catagory known as inks which were very important back in their day. You could have master inks, cone inks, (hereafter add the word ink) umbrella, house, turtles, teakettles, geometrics, and more. Most come in a variety of colors and sizes, and most types can also be broken into catagories, for instance, if you collect umbrellas, you can collect 6 sided, 8 sided, 12 sided or 16 sided, then you can work on colors and sizes, pontiled or not! There really is no end to the history and usage of old bottles and depending
on where you are, what club you belong to or even where you vacation, if you are lucky enough, you can find them in old dumps!
You can hunt in antique shops, second hand stores, and subscribe to bottle
magazines. The hobby of collecting antique bottles is not unique to the United States, there are many other countries
that have clubs with members that do the same. You will make many friends, and if you happen to go visiting, or on vacation, you
might be able to make additions to your collection
Books abound on antique bottles, and you can look for them on eBay, on websites
of other collectors, but the best thing to do is to start with a club. Members are only to happy to help you get going,
to share their knowledge and try to keep you from getting stuck with a reproduction.
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We have an annual auction where club members bring what they need or want to sell, and a small portion of the proceeds go to the club. We use those proceeds go towards helping to pay for our monthly newsletter and any other activity the club has. Usually in June we have our annual
picnic which has been held at a members home for quite a few years. Unfortunately Paul & Barb were not able to host
the picnic this year, so Charlie & Marcia stepped up and held it at their home (I believe it was in August). Charlie
was a DJ and he has a collection of thousands of records and several operational Juke Boxes, plus all the original record
covers you could want.
We have been lucky enough to find two places for club digs, one in the past few
years and one many years ago. The difficult thing about finding a place for the club members to dig, is the fact that
it's a club! So many places are hesitant to grant permission for single people to go onto their property, never mind
large numbers, but with our insurance, we have had some luck in digging locations.
The great thing a about our club is the people! They are more then willing
to help out if you have questions, to share their knowledge.
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