MENTION a ‘pre-war J. Gow green glass alley’ to most people and all you will get back is a blank stare.

But for a small group of enthusiasts from the Western Antique Bottle and Collectables Club (WABCC), these words, describing a rare old bottle, are like music to their ears.

The club celebrates its 30-year anniversary this year and some foundation members, such as past president Geoff Wilson, still regularly attend.

Mr Wilson started the club in his lounge room, after finding a few like-minded collectors in the area, and estimated he has accumulated “a couple of hundred bottles at least”.

He said the market for rare bottles had exploded recently, thanks to the popularity of television programs such as Antiques Roadshow.

Many older, rarer bottles now sell for more than $1000 with a West Australian beer bottle recently fetching more than $18,000 at a collectors’ fair in Maryborough.

Current WABCC president Julian Cole said the club was about much more than discussing rare examples of glass or stoneware, and this occasionally eccentric group had its unique charms.

“I’m not that much of a collector any more. I just go now because I love the club. It’s quite interesting, the quirky things that people collect,” he said. “People who collect bottles usually collect a ‘theme’.

“I collect milk bottles. Every suburb used to have their own dairy with a logo embossed on the bottle. It’s a really bizarre hobby but it is just great fun. It is the people that have kept me there. Everyone is so warm and they take you in.”

Mr Cole raised eyebrows in the bottle world when he was elected president of the WABCC while still a teenager, some 30 years the junior of the next-oldest member.

“The next generation – my age – are just not into it. I’ve got a few mates involved, but apart from us, everyone is much older,” he said.

WABCC meetings typically consist of a ‘formal’ section where members talk through newsletters and correspondence, before a themed “show and tell” session where members compare items.

“One week, everyone will bring in their three best milks, and we will talk about the maker and its history,” Mr Cole said.

The tight-knit world of bottle collecting is populated by a small band of die-hard enthusiasts who can loosely be divided into two categories: the collectors and the diggers.

“The diggers are the people who actually go around to the sites in Melbourne and dig the bottles up and the collectors are the ones that normally buy the bottles from them,” Mr Cole said.

The diggers live in a shadow world, often avoiding the long arm of the law – and Heritage Victoria – in their quest to unearth a rare specimen.

Stories abound of diggers getting into properties at night and removing stones or brickwork in search of bottles, before replacing the masonry and making their escape without waking the residents.

“These days the diggers look for vacant lots or head out into the country,” Mr Cole said. “Diggers know where on the property the bottles will be or where the dumps will be located. They can go to a site and just find it. I don’t know how they do that – there is a real art to finding bottles.

“It’s really hard to break into that group. I’ve tried it myself but they want all the bottles for themselves,” Mr Cole said. “They’re not mean people or anything, they’re just really competitive.”

The WABCC meets tomorrow night (Wednesday) at the Williamstown Senior Citizens Hall.