Glass Beach

[bdahunter]

[size=large]A couple of months ago a friend on another treasure hunting forum put out a general call for seaglass. it seems that the tumbled glass you find on the beach is a hot commodity and she uses the seaglass to make jewellery. There used to be a bottle factory in Bermuda near the old Royal Naval Dockyard back in the 1800's, they dumped their reject bottles in the ocean and the waves did the rest of the work to turn this glass into seaglass.

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The bottle factory is long gone but the beach nearby is a mountain of seaglass, so I agreed to stop by Glass Beach as it is called and pick up some seaglass and send it to her by mail. (this is before I realized how much it costs to send 5 lbs. of sea glass from Bermuda to the US by airmail but that's another story)
Over the course of all this mucking about I discovered that this seaglass isn't just old junk glass it is actually pretty valuable - about $50 / lb in bulk and the special jewellery pieces go for a lot more. So now I am kind of in the seaglass business, or at least I am collecting a bunch of the stuff while I figure out how to get around the high cost of shipping the seaglass to the mainland.

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[Cupajo]

It seems that some shapes and colors are more sought after than others.

Beer bottle brown and green, also clear are the most common colors (is clear a color?) of course therefore the least desirable.

Sharp edged pieces are much less valued than sand scoured soft edged pieces.

Some colors are very rare and different shades of red, blue and gold/orange stir up excitement in the collecting croud.

Some locales are more productive than others and it looks like you've found the "mother-load"!!

Good Luck Friend,

CJ

 

[Micheal_R]

n/t

 

[George-CT]

the beaches we used to go to, especially on the out lying island beaches to the open sea. Guess the wave action is the key to it all. Like a giant tumbler. I remember blues as the ones we liked. Mostly we would skip them back in the water. Here I was trying to find treasure and I was flinging it back in the water..,, figures.... That's pretty good. $50 bucks for a lb of it. Have to pass that on to my daughter, she does a lot of arts and crafts stuff and always looking for new projects to work with.


Good post..

Geo

 

[Kelley (Texas)]

was worth anything. You can find broken glass like this down at the Texas Gulf Coast too. Years ago, I found lots of semi-round small rocks, many different colors...green, blue, red, and any other color that you can just about imagine at this one area on the beach. I tried to polish them in a tumbler, but they would only keep getting smaller and smaller, and only looked semi-polished. Evidently, they were too soft to polish. I kept at it until they were about the size of marbles and then gave them to some kids to play with. I wonder what would happen if I tried to polish some of this broken glass in a tumbler. Thanks for posting this story. Kelley (Texas)

 

[bdahunter]

The scarcity of seaglass is due in large part to the clean up campaigns and the anti-littering campaigns of the past few decades. Sea glass collectors continue to pick up sea glass but it is no longer replenished the way it was in the past. Imagine the reaction of the people around you at the beach if you finished your bottle of beer and then fired the bottle out into the surf?:veryangry:

This shortage has lead to people putting broken glass into tumblers to manufacture seaglass in order to meet the demands of the craft industry. The manufactured seaglass really doesn't look the same and is worth much less than the real deal. You can make sea glass jewellery as well as sea glass windchimess and stained glass, plus every other crafty thing you can think of with coloured glass. Red, orange, blue and black are the rarest colours and a single piece of red seaglass the size of your thumbnail would be worth several hundred dollars on the open market.

So next time you are hunting the beach and sea a piece of red seaglass sticking up out of the sand, grab it.

 

[Cupajo]

These are pieces of sea glass (although some are still shiny and too fresh to fit the sea glass description of soft edges and muted colors) that I found and have been saving for the lady I mentioned in a recent post.

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Notice the finger hole jug top with its attached clams.

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This is a couple of weeks of picking up pieces as I am searching for more serious finds (fish-hooks etc.).

I found the jug top this AM and was prompted to share this with you.

Regards,

CJ

PS I just noticed the pics aren't as sharp as I would like.

I took them in natural light and I should have used the flash!!

 

[Bayrat76]

a show on that, The Treasure Hunter, with this girl that host it was hunting for it, orange and yellow where high sought after colors. Just think of all the glass I pick up in the nets and throw back over the side.

 

[bdahunter]

If it is shiny then it isn't ready, so I toss them back. If you need some glass I can send you some.

Cheers,

Eric

 

[Cupajo]

Hi Eric,

I personally have no use for the glass, but pick it up when I find it for the lady that uses it in her craft work.

Mostly I am looking for anything that doesn't "belong" such as fishing line (especially with hooks attached), plastic, glass, metal etc!

Stainless wire is used a lot in deep water for trolling and I have been finding lots of short pieces a foot long or so.

It is flexible enough not to present much of a hazard to bare feet, but it shouldn't be there so I take it away.

It was a cold one this AM with enough overcast that I couldn't see the sun-rise as I walked the waters edge in the early morning light.

Best to Ya Friend and thanks for the offer.

CJ