People everywhere and from all walks of life love to collect and use vintage bottles. And so they should, collecting vintage bottles is fun and engrossing while the end result of your efforts is a collection of venerable old bottles from yesteryear.

The vintage bottles bottles come in many colors making for a colorful and intriguing display. The most valued colors are yellow and olive greens, cobalt blue and teal blue, purple, yellow and green. The earliest form of American glass is likely to be black glass. The black color of the bottle was most advantageous because it helped protect its contents from going bad. The word “black” also can be used to describe dark amber and olive-amber colors.

With such a variety of shapes and colors to look for, it can be a treasure hunt looking for the old bottles in a flea market, thrift shops and auctions. Some people may be lucky enough to have vintage bottles already in their home among their old collections of stuff, such as the collections of old treasures that gathers dust in attics. You might try looking around other areas of your home, such as the kitchen, laundry room and garage to see if there are any old bottles there.

If you are a serious collector, you may buy vintage bottles and find yourself looking for them in the antique shops and searching the auction sites on the Internet such as eBay for that special find.

If you are just starting out collecting vintage bottles then you will want to know a little bit about how to identify one.

Most vintage bottles were handmade so you will most likely not find two identical bottles. The bottles will contain flaws and may contain bubbles in the glass. These are two characteristics that can make a bottle more sought after and valuable.

Other characteristics to look for along with color, flaws and bubbles, are:

- The age of the bottle. Bottles made before 1970 had lips that were handmade. You can also figure out age by the base of the bottle. Most bottles made before the mid 1800’s will have a mark on the bottom where the rod used to hold the bottle while the lip is made, is broken off the bottom.

- Design Or Embossing. It is more valuable if the design or embossing identifies date the bottle was made.

- Condition. Chips or cracks in the bottle lessens its value.

- Category. Medicine bottles, soda bottles, perfume bottles, ink bottles, alcohol bottles and druggist bottles are some of the categories.

Vintage bottle collecting can be profitable too. Imagine your thrill when your latest find turns out to be worth $50.00 and is very rare. The value of your collection will be the value of all the bottles that you collect, which over the passage of time can become quite large.