It is kind of a gray-blue rainy day here in Newport News, Virginia. What a nice time to post some blue fish bottles. Charles Aprill posted his blue fish last night on facebook. We talked three or so years ago about his example and I wrote about it in the FOHBC Bottles and Extras. Here both blue fish bottles appear on the same page!
“The bottle was being used to feed Liniment to a horse”.
Blue Fish Bitters - Aprill Collection
Spread 2 - Exploration & Documentation
Read: Glass Passion and Color Part II : Exploration and Color
*as reprinted from The Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC) Bottles & Extra Magazine. November-December 2009.
Download PDF: Article_2
[Excerpt from article] As you may be aware, I was fortunate enough to obtain the classic Cobalt Blue Fish Bitters recently in a private transaction. This bottle came from the Don Keating collection thru an intermediary. This addition to my collection was very public and I believe created much positive publicity because I chose to be open and display the bottle on my table at the Pomona National FOHBC Show this past August.
With the publicity generated, this opened the doors for gathering information about this bottle. Through discussions and e-mails I have been able to gather the following valuable information to digest:
1) During the recent FOHBC Show, a trusted collector shared that this same bottle was discovered many years ago in Waupaca, Wisconsin on a farm. The bottle was being used to feed Liniment to a horse. A bottle collector discovered this and purchased the bottle for $500.00 and flipped it for $1,000.00. During the open Bitters Forum at the show, other collectors shared stories of the next series of owners.
2) The elusive owner of the only other known Blue Fish bitters contacted me and confirmed that their bottle lip is offset, ie. R/H F46. The owner looked at it again at my request and in good light and with a magnifying glass confirmed that there is no ‘The Fish Bitters’ embossing on the gills. Their bottle has a sheared lip. They further stated that their bottle ‘came from Elvin Moody (Ohio) many years ago’ and that ‘he had purchased it at a Skinner’s auction in Bolton Mass. in the mid 80′s’ he believed.
3) From another e-mail, ‘That fish appeared at the 1976 EXPO in St. Louis. I recall that the rumor then was that it had been purchased for the princely sum of $5,000.00. The good old days’.
Cobalt Blue Fish Bitters - Meyer Collection
Read More: World Famous Cobalt Blue “The Fish” Bitters
Very nice. Thanks. Elvin Moody got a blue fish in1972, or so, at Skinner’s in Bolton. I’ll look to see if we still have the catalog. We got that fish from Elvin. I don’t believe it was
for sale or sold at Expo in1975. Nice to “see” them together. A small but “elite”school of fish. c.a.