Covina Bottle

My old medicine bottle collection–which I started 25 years ago–is now complete. I finally have a Covina bottle. I found my Holy Grail at last. Now there's nothing more that I'm looking for. There's no way I could surpass this find, anyway.

So here is my treasure:
(Shows approximate actual size)

According to the seller, this bottle lay in a surface dump in Covina for about 50 years before I was born there, and 50 more years later, it is mine. The aerial photo below was taken in 1957. The charcoal-circled area near the top was the approximate location of the dump, behind the old city reservoir on San Bernardino Rd. That's where its original collector found it, right around the time I entered the world.



I got the bottle on eBay for only $66. After I won it, I asked the seller what its book value was. He said it had no book value because not enough examples of it are known to exist, so the price I paid is unbelievably cheap. I'm still amazed that there wasn't more interest in the auction (there's a highly-predatory cabal of Covina collectors on eBay, who obviously have a lot more money to throw around than I do). Anyway, a similar medicine from nearby Alhambra from the same seller went for $230, so I really was quite fortunate in this acquisition.