HutchBook: How to Use the Hutchinson Bottle Database

The community-built reference every serious Hutch collector uses — 17,000+ recorded bottles by state, town, and bottler, with rarity notes and full embossing transcriptions.

Filed under: Research Tools · Hutchinson Era · Bottle Identification

If you've picked up a Hutchinson soda bottle at an estate sale or dug one out of an old privy, the first question is almost always the same: what is this, and is it rare? The single most useful research tool for answering both questions is HutchBook, the community-built Hutchinson bottle database that catalogues over 17,000 recorded Hutchinson soda bottles from across North America and beyond.

This guide covers what HutchBook is, its origin, how the state-code system works, how to search it effectively, and what to do when it's unavailable — because the primary site has been in transitional states over the past few years.

What HutchBook is

HutchBook.com is a searchable online catalog of Hutchinson-era soda bottles. Each entry represents one specific Hutch bottle known to the collecting community — a specific bottler in a specific town, with the exact embossing recorded, plus rarity notes, glass color, dimensions, and (where available) images or drawings.

The project's roots go back to 1976, when Joe Nagy proposed a state-by-state Hutchinson book series in Old Bottle Magazine. Over the next three-plus decades, collectors from across North America contributed rubbings, drawings, specifications, and histories. Ron Fowler shepherded the project, and the internet edition — the online database with a full search engine built by Tod von Mechow (of SodasAndBeers.com fame) — launched Phase II on August 1, 2012 with data on 17,000+ bottles. The database has continued to grow, exceeding 21,000 catalogued entries in later updates.

How the state-code system works

HutchBook assigns each recorded bottle a code combining the two-letter state (or country/territory) abbreviation and a sequential number. This code is the durable identifier the entire hobby uses to talk about a specific Hutch bottle without ambiguity.

So when a collector on a forum or dealer at a show says "I picked up an AL0038 last weekend," another Hutch collector immediately knows: Meumann, Bessemer, Alabama, roughly 6.375" tall, aqua. No confusion.

Variants and half-numbers

The Hutchinson world is full of variants — bottles that are essentially the same but differ in one small detail (a different plate mould, a slightly different embossing arrangement, a different glass maker's mark on the base). HutchBook and its inheritor projects handle this by inserting decimal codes, e.g. IN0316.5 for a newly discovered Indiana Hutch that fits between #316 and #317 in the sequence.

How to search HutchBook effectively

The search engine takes multiple criteria. The community advice, distilled: the simpler your query, the better the results. Cast a broad net first, narrow only if you get too many hits.

Search fields worth knowing

The right way to search embossing

Suppose the front of your bottle reads:

Do not type all of that into any single field. The recommended approach is to pick the single most distinctive word — here, PUGET — and drop it into the Primary Name or All Embossing field with the state set to Washington. Hit search. You'll almost certainly get a short list containing your bottle. If you get too many results, add a second distinctive word; if you get too few, remove your state restriction and search more broadly.

Reading a HutchBook entry

A typical entry gives you six things a serious collector cares about:

1. State code — the identifier used across the hobby.
2. Bottler name and town — who made the soda and where.
3. Full embossing transcription — front, back, base, in the exact case and spacing as embossed. This is the primary tool for matching a physical bottle to an entry.
4. Physical description — height, color, glass manufacturer if known, plate mould shape, closure type.
5. Rarity note — commentary from contributors on how frequently this specific bottle turns up (from "common" to "only a few known"). Not always dollar-quantified but directionally useful.
6. Comments — historical background on the bottler, notes about variants, requests for better images ("need better image" is a common tag on partial entries).

What HutchBook can't do

Two important limitations for new users:

1. It's not a price guide

HutchBook records what exists, not what a specific example is worth in a specific condition on a specific day. For actual pricing you need to look at live and completed sales data — primarily eBay's sold-listing filter, plus results from established bottle auctioneers.

2. Not every Hutch is catalogued

Even at 21,000+ entries, undocumented variants turn up. If you can't find a match after honest searching, don't assume your bottle is a fake — it may simply be a variant nobody has submitted yet. The Indiana project and other state-level catalogs actively welcome submissions of new variants with photos and details.

Alternatives when HutchBook is down

When the main site is unreachable or a specific state's entries won't load, these are the reference sources the community turns to:

• State-level bottle collector sites. Indiana Bottle Collectors (indianabottlecollectors.com) maintains a full Indiana Hutch catalog, explicitly built from mirrored HutchBook data. MrBottles.com covers Wisconsin Hutchinsons in depth. Similar state-level projects exist for many others; a search for "[your state] hutchinson bottle collectors" will usually find one.
• Tod von Mechow's SodasAndBeers.com. A comprehensive database of North American soda and beer bottles with over 13,000 bottles catalogued, including Hutchinsons, plus histories of 177+ soda-and-beer manufacturers and illustrations of dozens of different closure types.
• The Society for Historical Archaeology bottle site (sha.org/bottle/) — the go-to academic reference for bottle manufacturing history, dating methods, and maker's marks. Broader than Hutch but authoritative on the surrounding technology.
• FOHBC (Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors) — the umbrella hobby organization. Their site and quarterly magazine Antique Bottle & Glass Collector are essential.
• The Hutchinson Bottle Collectors' Association (HBCA) — a specialty club dedicated to this exact category, and the community that most actively maintains the knowledge base.
• Peachridge Glass (peachridgeglass.com) — extensive collector articles, including deep dives on W.H. Hutchinson & Son bottling history.

A worked example

Suppose you dig up an aqua Hutch in central Pennsylvania. The front reads:

Step by step:

1. State = Pennsylvania.
2. Distinctive word = "GETZ" (surname, not a common industry term).
3. Search — you should get a small result set, ideally with your bottle in it.
4. Confirm by comparing your bottle's front and back embossing exactly to the entry.
5. Record the state code (would be something like PA0xxx).
6. Check the rarity note for context.
7. Then go to eBay's sold listings and search "Getz York PA hutchinson" to see recent transaction prices.

Total time: five minutes. You now know what you have, roughly how rare it is, and what similar examples have recently sold for. That's the entire baseline research process any Hutchinson collector goes through before making a buy, sell, or valuation decision.

The bottom line

HutchBook — and the state-level catalogs that increasingly complement or mirror it — is the reason the Hutchinson category has one of the most complete cataloging efforts in the entire American bottle hobby. Learn the search patterns, learn the state-code system, and get in the habit of cross-referencing with sold-listing data before you assign value to anything. The database tells you what it is; the market tells you what it's worth.