Here are some of my dumping trip photos. If you want to see photos from 2003-2008 check my previous Dumping Pics Page.

May 2013

Mark and I re-visited western Massachusetts then north to Tupper Lake. The weather mostly cooperated, although we did get hit in one big rainstorm. We found some new dumps, and some that people had dug before us. We found some good cans though, and it was one of our better trips. I torn a meniscus in one of my knees in the late summer so I didn't get to go digging again the rest of 2013 so this one trip will have to do for the year.

Found a pull-off with nice deep ground cover. I scatter-dumped cans dating back to the 1930s. Nothing exciting, but I did find some Lion Ale OIs about a foot down. Alas, they didn't clean up very well.

Revisited a dump we'd been to in 2012, and sure enough, found a large section we'd missed. Fopund 4 nice POC flats that cleaned up well. The other cans are fairly common. The white Genesee cans are zip tops.

Mark digs some cans under a big piece of sheet metal.

A fairly rare conetop. I saw a bottle poking out of the ground and dug these three from a small 1930s picnic trash pit. Why did such a rare can have to be in such lousy condition?

No cans here, but I like how the little fir trees hold onto the top of that huge rock.

A Ruppert Knickerbocker flat peeks out from the roots of a tree.

Ready to drive 500 miles home with several buckets and boxes of cans to clean.

June 2012

Mark and I went to western Massachusetts then north to Horseshoe Lake and the famous Conifer dump.

The famous Conifer Dump. It was very overgrown, alas.

Found some cans scatter-dumping around a picnic area, including an early 1960s pit with Canada Dry soda flats and a couple Dinty Moore Beef Stew cans. Here are some of the cans we found after cleaning.

Found some late 1940s and early 1950s cans amid these rocks near a camping & fishing area. Many of the cans were very clean (see below).

Mark holds an early 1950s Ruppert that was protected between some rocks near a camping spot. Here are some of the cans we found after cleaning. The Tudors were a tougher variation from Hornell in New York. The white Genny's were zips. The POCs are a scarce label from Ohio; unfortunately they were in poor condition and we didn't keep them. Actually, we only kept a handful of the cans in the end. Most of them we left out in a box marked "free" at Blue-Gray and someone took a few of them.

 

March 2012

One of the bottle guys shared a 1940s-50s dump with me. No exciting cans yet, but we have found a few cool bottles, and lots of intact plastic early 1950s toys.

A hole!

Cans and bottles before cleaning.

Toys!

 

October 2011

Returned with Mark K. to western Massachusetts.

You'd never know there were cans buried under there until you dug.

A nice late 19th century canning jar, buried with cans and bottles from 1951 and 1952

A few cans that we dug on this trip, after cleaning. The Ruppert Ale was a shelver.

I really liked how the Autumn light lit up the birch trees in the woods.

 

May 2011

I made my annual spring trip to Massachusetts to dump with Pete, Mark K., Charlie and Dave L. We found some 1930s and 1940s cans, but condition was often lacking. Still, I added a couple cans to my shelf. I also ran into a stone wall damaging my rear bumper, had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere requiring a long wait for a tow truck, suffered through a bad spring cold, and broke my camera, which is why I don't have more photos.

	Dave and Charlie dig.
	Some typical rusty dump junk; a food can and a cast-iron whatsit.
	A nice Old Topper Snappy Ale j-spout from about 1937-39 pops out.
	From a second dump, not the one shown above. A tough 1950s can, a Boylston. This dump was made up of at least 80% Budweiser cans, but there were a few gems to be found.
	Near the Budweiser dump, a pretty spring New England stream.
	Some Colonial Wehle's from about 1935-1937. They came from the first dump, buried well back in the woods along with license plates from 1934 and 1936.

 

 

August 2010

Our third trip to the farm dump and still finding good cans!

	Nothing rare here but this dump was fun to dig. Glenn found the best can in the dump (next photo). FYI, the Hamms are all from Baltimore.
	Glenn shows off the best find of the dump, a "Virginia Special" from Virginia Brewing in Roanoke.
	I found this cool toy fire truck!

 

May 2010

Glenn took Candog and I to a dump on the Eastern Shore. It was all Pabst Blue Ribbon OI's and Schlitz cones from 1939. We found well over a dozen churchkeys. Was this the remains of a party dump? Glenn and I also rehit the farm dump in northern Virginia.

	The Pabst OI dump. Hundreds and hundreds of Pabst Blue Ribbon OI's from 1939, with many cases of Schlitz conetops and a handful of Budweiser OIs mixed in. There was also a single Old Dutch Beer flat and a Red Lion flat, neither of which cleaned up enough to keep.
	Some of the 1939 Pabst cans. They were coming out of the ground so clean it was amazing. We only kept a few of the better ones.
	I found a small metal aspirin box that rattled when I shook it. It fell apart and inside was this "Lucky Coin" from John Deere! It was under the concrete slab you can see in the background in the top photo.
	Cans from the farm dump. The Baltimore Hamms zip (middle row, 2d from right) is a hard can to find, but the rest are all very common. All the Hamms cans are from Baltimore. The Brown Derby is from Norfolk.

 

 

May 2010

My annual trip to New England to see Mark K. and Pete. We found some GREAT dumps. The main ones were

a) The "church grounds dump" A pile of maybe a hundred conetops in the woods. It was mostly Dawson's cones and Fitzgerald Ale crowntainers.

b) The old road ale dump. Thousands and thousands of cans dating from the 1940s into the early 1960s. The dump was along an old road and we eventually had to leave because the biting flies and gnats got so bad. Most of the beer cans were from ales, not beers, but there were some nice Krueger Beer cans.

c) The park dump. A pile of several dozen cans from the late 1940s in a wooded city park. It was all Fitzgerald Ale crowntainers, Schaefer 'woodgrain" flats, and bottle caps from Hamden Ale.

d) The town dump. In a ravine along a side road, it dated from pre-1930 to the 1950s. Most of the cans were too far gone to save, but we found pockets of good cans from the 1930s and 1950s.

	A Krueger Beer from the late 1940s still in the ground.
	A Rheingold Ale from about 1950 from the old road ale dump. Pete found this one, then I put my digger through the face of another clean one! ARGH!
	Cans and bottles and pieces of both were buried a couple feet dump for maybe a hundred yards or more along a back road. We eventually left when the bugs got so bad at dusk that we could no longer stand them. Even with massive amounts of Deep Woods Off we were being eaten alive! The quart you can see poking out of the ground was only the top half of a brake fluid can.
	Our cans from the first day of dumping.
	We found an old town dump the next day. We stayed here, huddled in the ravine, while a violent thunderstorm rolled past. At first we were not digging anything good, just 1950s Ruppert's. Then Mark K found a really clean Dawson's Ale flat (see the bottom row of the last photo in this section). Then Pete found a quart and we started hitting 1930s cans. I dug several Wehle Colonial Ales and a couple quarts. That's Pete in blue huddled over the hole he was digging.
	Some of the cleaned cans. No, we didn't keep all of them. Some of these ended up being tossed out. I keep the Dawson's as I needed it.
	12 oz conetops, most from the dump we found on day one. The Fitzgerald and the 2 Dawson's at right were in what we named the "church grounds dump."
	Crowntainers. Most came from the "church grounds dump" and a few came from a local park. We ended up tossing most of them out.
	Most of these came from the old town dump we dug the second day. The older cans (Rheingold, Wehle, Drewrys, etc) came from there. The Peter Doelger Ale in the top row was one of my favorite finds. The Rheingold Beer at top left is the older "Big R" version. Both were "mystery cans" when we dug them. The Hamden Ales, Krueger's, and Ballantine Ale came from the big dump we dug on the first day. I don't know where the wood grain Schaefer came from, as we dug them in at least three spots. The Pickwick came from our 2009 trip. I recleaned it and forgot to take it out of the photo. Mark dug it near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border.

April 2010

Candog and I met Glenn and went dumping in northwestern Virginia. Found a cool farm dump with lots of Gunthers and Baltimore Hamms, along with a nice variety of other late 50s flats.

	Not much here worth keeping, except for the Naty Boh transition can at the upper left. But the photo shows some of the labels we were finding.
	The Gunther's in the middle row are from the 1940s. We found them buried in a ravine near the Virginia/West Virginia line.
	Again, not a lot worth keeping here, except for the Hamms zip top in the top row. It's from Baltimore so it's much harder to find than the Hamms from Minnesota.

 

May 2009

Hit the woods with Matt. Found almost nothing but a few common cans and a creepy doll head!

REDRUM!

 

May 2009

Went up to New Hampshire and Massachusetts with Mark K., Pete, Charlie and Dave L. We didn't find any huge dumps but we did find a cool quart dump (where I got my tough Brockert quart). We also did a lot of scatter dumping and found a pile of over two dozen gold Rheingold cans from the late 1930s. Alas, they were all faded.

	Mark watches while Charlie finds a conetop with his detector as we scatter-dump an old camping ground in northwestern Massachusetts.
	Dave scatter dumps the old campground.
	We stumbled on this cool old bulldozer in the woods. Anybody else ever see the 1974 movie "Killdozer"?
	You can't see it clearly, but that black lump in the center of the picture is a really big beaver.
	Some of the quarts we dug in southern New Hampshire. Alas, none were worth keeping.
	We found over a case of Rheingolds in a pile. They cleaned up, but had been badly faded by the sun before they had been covered over.
	Charlie dug this quart along with the ones I pictured above. It's a rare label so I kept this one. The while spot on the cans lower front is pine pitch.