The Collectors
SEARCH
Thursday 6 October 2005
watch entire episode 
download entire episode
Now it’s time for this week’s passionate collector. Wes Young is a serious, dedicated collector of bottles of all kinds from all over Australia...and he has thousands of them.
Mandy Beveridge is more restrained...she has just a few hundred perfume bottles. And they’ve also got a single collectable object that is very special indeed.
Wes collects Tasmanian Maritime memorabilia first and foremost. Collecting for Wes is about the thrill of the chase. Wes and Mandy have a collectables room that they are quickly filling. The most important factors in bottle collecting are rarity, condition and appeal.
Making bottles to lay on their side ensured that the cork wouldnt dry out and shrink. Ginger beer was bottled in stoneware because it was stronger than glass and didnt explode during fermentation. Smaller factories used sand blasting as it was a cheaper way to emboss.
The word 'bottle' is derived from the Latin diminutive of 'Buttis', or 'cask'.
Wes's pride and joy is a deck chair which is reputably from the Titanic. Wes bought it in Adelaide at an deceased estate auction for the belongings of a 90 year old sailor. He had picked up the deck chair from the floating wreckage after the disaster. It is not actually a White Starline issue chair. It would have belonged to a second or third class passenger who took it along for the trip because in that class one had to supply ones own.
