Warner's Safe Nervine Half Pint in Green from Melbourne
Just in case you were asleep this past week, a nice little gem of a Warner’s Safe Cure came up for bid on eBay. A half pint Nervine from Melbourne in GREEN. Now, mind you, a half pint Nervine from Melbourne is considered a rare Warner’s in and of itself a rare bottle. A half pint Nervine in green is…….well…….something more than rare.
In my experience, I have seen a few Safe Cures from Melbourne with a greenish tint, but they were all of the H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. variety and are the later Melbourne bottles. This bottle was the full blown early Melbourne variety with the traditional safe image embossed on it. It is generally believed that these bottles were not made in Australia, but rather made in the United States or England and shipped there. The fact that this is green would suggest that it came from England. As you can see from the pictures, this is not a bottle with a green tint or green if you hold it a certain way under the light. This bottle is just plain green. Not sure who was the high bidder, but they paid just shy of $2500 for it. Which, considering the rarity of this bottle, is a steal.
I would invite my friends from downunder, including Wayne, to weigh in on how rare this bottle is. Interestingly, the seller was not from Australia, but rather from Germany. I emailed the seller in Leipsig and he kindly told me the story of this bottle. It seems that the local soccer (football for you non-Americans) team needed a new practice field and, it just so happened, that the field was on top of a pre-1900′s dump. There were apparently bottles lying around for the taking. This particular Warner’s Safe Nervine was buried up to its neck when the seller saw it. As it turned out, it was undamaged. I wish I had that kind of luck. For my part, I think it may be time to add another bottle to my “A” List. Congratulations to the seller and to the high bidder on this nice Warner’s gem….I’m GREEN with envy.
