Can I Carry That For You?

Today was my day off from the XYZ. My mom found an auction in Virginia about an hour away that advertised a large amount of old medicine bottles. Since I am going to be a pharmacist in about 8 months, I have taken up a new hobby - collecting old medicine bottles. Finding the sale was a journey in itself. Once we got there and registered as bidders, the real fun began. There were close to 1,000 bottles to look through before the auctioneer got to those lots. The bottles were filthy to say the least - but all were from either mid-late 1800s to early 1900s. They were placed in boxes with roughly 20-30 bottles per lot. One of the boxes had a Liver Cure bottle (read - very old, very rare, very expensive). Several of the bottles were from pharmacies in the Stuanton and Woodstock areas thus having a high appeal to bidders at the sale. I figured I was SOL when the first bottle auctioned went for $80. This was not a lot of 20 bottles, but 1 single bottle with Edinburgh, Virginia embossed on it. The prices just went up from there, with the highest being $310. It was a beer bottle from Winchester, Virgina. The medicine bottles went for less. I bid a set of Woodstock pharmacy bottles up to $25 and dropped out - the set went for $65. I was ready to leave when they started auctioning the boxes, but I was pleasantly surprised. I got 3 of the boxes for $5 a piece. I got a wooden box of bottles for $10 and another 2 boxes for $12.50 a piece. One of those had at least 50 bottles in it. The box with the Liver Cure bottle went for over $100. The older gentleman who won, put the Cure bottle in his pocket and gave me the entire box of bottles left over. I was soooo happy. :) After the auction, three other guys that were bidding on the bottles approached me to see what types of bottles interested me. All asked me to attend a bottle show in 2 weeks where their wears would be sold. They all then asked to carry my boxes to the car - which I promptly allowed them to do. Being a feminist this kind of goes against my grain, but they bottles were dirty and the boxes were pretty heavy. At the end of the day, I got all my bottles carried to the car, an offer to buy a morphine bottle from the early 1900s, and a box of bottle collector magazines for free.