Old bottle dumps may not sound too glitzy, but they can lead you to big bucks. All it takes is finding one intact rare bottle and you could have thousands of dollars in your bank account. Although there might not be any metal on bottles, your metal detector can still lead you to them.
How Can Detectors Find Bottles or Jars?
Obviously, your detector won’t lead you straight to glass bottles and jars. But it can find them indirectly. I’ve uncovered many mason jars because their lids created a target for me. The lids have almost always been at least partially rusted out and destroyed, but the old mason jars are always welcome additions to my collection, even if they don’t have their lids.
Another way your detector can lead you to old bottle dumps is by hitting nearby metal targets. I’ve found most of my bottles inadvertently while digging metal signals.
What Are Some Good Places to Look for Bottle Dumps?
You can find old bottles anywhere, but you’ll find more if you know where their best hiding spots tend to be.
Outhouse Sites
My favorite place to find old bottles is one that some people find a little gross – old outhouse sites. Before I started my first outhouse dig, I had been told that I would likely find bottles while I was digging. Those bottles would often be broken, but sometimes they would be fully intact and potentially valuable.
I didn’t give it much thought and I went ahead with my dig. Sure enough, I started pulling bottle after bottle from the earth. I uncovered about a dozen unbroken bottles on that hunt, along with some other great finds. None of them were worth more than a few dollars, but it was enough to get me hooked on finding old bottle dumps.
I’ve recently discovered another site where I pulled 8 bottles from the ground, including an old inkwell. The location was at another old outhouse site.
Old Farm Dumps or Family Dumps
A few decades ago, many people disposed of their unwanted items by burying them or dumping them at a less desirable part of their properties. When old medicine bottles were emptied or inkwells became outdated by modern pens, they simply threw them in the dump and walked off.
These dumps are a great place for us to find bottles today. You can find everything from mason jars to old soda bottles to the cure-all elixirs that were peddled back in the day.
The nice thing about these dumps from a metal detectorists standpoint is that everything was dumped at these sites. So bottles were surrounded by metallic items such as cans, lids and even things like old glass syringes, which I’ve found occasionally at dumps.
When you hunt at a dump site, you’ll get a lot of targets and many of them will sound like junk. If I hit a lot of signals in one area, I’m always going to choose to dig to see what all the noise is about. That’s helped me land my share of old farm dump finds.
The numerous sounds will also help you outline the perimeter of the dump because you’ll notice when the signals begin to subside in each direction.
Make Sure You Dig Deep
When you find an old bottle dump, the digging can be intense. You’ll happily grab the bottles you see and there will come a point where you’ll believe you’ve found every bottle there is to find. That’s precisely when you should talk yourself out of giving up. Keep digging. You’ll likely find more bottles and they’ll be older than the ones you’ve already uncovered.
The newest bottles will be closest to the surface and the oldest will be underneath those. It may take some extra digging, but your effort might be rewarded by a rare bottle find.
