Collecting old bottles: classic or dud?

In other cleaning house news, I've got the best way to make money ever: put an ad in the paper saying that you will try all the pens in the client's house to see if they work

that would be brilliant - especially if you then refused to tell them the results.

though that might spoil the whole money making aspect of it.

Oh man, I know a guy who used to do this compulsively when he was astudent (he's about 40 now). He was a local in the pub I used to work in, and he had some fucking amazing stories. I thought it must be the shittest hobby in the world, but if you're a 'digger', i.e. someone who hunts and digs (dur) for the bottles rather than just collects them, it's mad. It's like being a crazy Dungeons&Dragons adventurer. Nick (for we shared a name) used to break into people's houses in the middle of the night with his digger friends, sneak into the cellars and then start digging if they'd had a tip-off about what was under the house, and all for a bottle! I remember one tale about digging beneath a phonebooth to get at an old pub cellar and causing the booth to subside the next time someone used the phone. He had bags of tales about crepuscular glassware subterfuge and other such semi-lunatic mayhem. These guys make metal-detector people look normal!

you can get a 20p refund for some glass bottles! (irn-bru.)

Dude NIck, I had no idea the bottle-keeping habit could flower into full-blown dementia! Originally I was thinking about people who keep an empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire here, or a Jim Beam Rye bottle there, and stack them all up on top of the cabinets. Like a sad and unvisited mausoleum of good tymes past. Your guy sounds like a grave-robber!

MarkH you sound like a dotcom venture capitalist

My dads got a load of old Avon bottles from the 60s. He just keeps them cos he thinks they look nice (mentalist) but we check on ebay today, and they're being sold for a tenner a pop! The way forward seems to be:

a) buy something disposable
b) don't dispose of it.
c) Keep it for 30 yrs.
d) Sell it.

* sound of tracer putting his bus pass in a mylar bag and filling with inert gas *

I used to keep the empties from a whole bunch of miniatures I had when I went thru a cocktail-making phase. The bottles were tiny and looked cute.

I also kept all my empties of V (energy drink in emerald green bottle) and lined them all on a windowsill til it was 3-deep. But then a spider decided to make a nice home in all the sugary mess and so I had to relent and turf them after some time.

I'm a dreadful hoarder.