Yahoo Finance $17,500 reason to check your shed
A rare ginger beer bottle from the 1930s has gone under the hammer for a whopping $17,500 in Toowoomba, with collectors urging Aussies to check their sheds for their own.
The stoneware Doneley and Butler bottle had a green lip at the top, which is what set the bottle apart from others in the collection.
"These bottles are extremely rare, there have only been two or three found in perfect condition," auctioneer Graham Lancaster told ABC.
The ginger beer bottle set a local record, and possibly a global record, for the auction price of an antique soft drink bottle.
But there’s plenty more to go around, Lancaster said, as many Australian towns had a local soft drink company, and each produced their own bottles.
"They were made to be thrown away or recycled,” he said.
"Many of these things — including this bottle — were discarded, thrown into a rubbish tip or creek, and dug up years later."
And people are still finding bottles to this day, he said.
"Every farm has an old shed or a farm dump," Lancaster said.
"I know of a couple near Roma who were out on their horses on their farm, saw something sticking out from underneath a piece of tin, and found nine ginger beer bottles worth a thousand bucks each.
"The earliest rubbish tip in Toowoomba is in Queens Park, but you'll probably go to jail if you try and dig that up."
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