SWANSEA BOTTLES

Introduction

From this website you will notice that I am mostly interested in Swansea bottles and ginger beers in particular, but I have an eclectic interest and collect many things, but most of my collection is about from the South Wales area.

I first started collecting bottles when I was about 15, nearly 25 years ago now. I remember finding my first bottle, I was exploring an old derelict house and my friends and I looked under some floorboards and came across some old beer bottles (which I can only assume the builders of the house had left there), my friend at the time had started to collect bottles, so the bug was already there and I caught it. As the years passed my collection grew, fuelled from such magazines as "Collectorama" my passion for bottle collecting increased. As most collectors do I decided to specialise, my particular passion was bottles from the Swansea area, so I spent many years digging, trading and seeking bottles from the Swansea area. At that time I managed to get a very good collection together, but as most collectors know times change and so do collecting habits.

I decided one day that it was time to move on and sold my collection, I moved away from Swansea and for the next 10 years other interests occupied me, but the bug had never gone away and the collecting habit soon reared its head.

When I came back to bottle collecting after ten years a lot had changed, more finds had been made and more information was available and local items were being appreciated, previously Warner's, coloured codds and coloured top ginger beers were fetching sky high prices, but now local collectors were beginning to appreciate their own rarities and their bottles were also fetching high prices.
If you look at this web site you may not be interested in Swansea ginger beers in themselves but, if you are a collector of local items I hope you may also produce a list of your local bottles so everyone else can appreciate what you have to offer, and further educate others to your particular collecting habit.

Many thanks for looking:

Carl