Check the bottom of the bottle for what is known as a pontil mark. This will be a ring or area of rough glass from where a supporting rod held the bottle during glass blowing and definitively dates the glass as being vintage.

What do the numbers on old glass bottles mean?

Base of the Bottle Markings In most cases, one- or two-digit numbers are actually mold numbers that indicate the specific bottle mold or section in an automatic bottle machine. Base numbers also indicate bottle styles or shapes, manufacturing dates, or factory location codes.

How can you tell how old a brown bottle is?

The seams on a bottle are indicators of how it was made and also indicate its age, says the Society for Historical Archaeology. If a vertical seam ends below the lip and the bottle has no horizontal seams, the bottle was most likely hand-blown into a mold.

Do they put Braille on beer bottles?

Real world factlet: Beer makers make beer. According to our pals at Owens-Brockway, makers of lots and lots of bottles for lots and lots of beer companies, the string of tiny lumps is a binary or hex code (depending on manufacturer) that indicates in which set of molds the bottle was made.

Do they put Braille on alcohol bottles?

After Chapoutier adopted the Braille, so did many other winemakers, making it much easier for those without sight to choose and enjoy a bottle of wine. And thats how Braille wound up on wine bottles.