The Ocean Has Polished Our Broken Glass And Turned Into Treasure

Much of the glass humans have broken and thrown away throughout history has ended up in the ocean. Luckily, unlike plastic, glass is a natural material made out of sand, that eventually turns back into sand once it has eroded into tiny enough pieces. Before it breaks all the way back down into sand, it is tumbled by the ocean into these dazzling little stones called “sea glass.”

The previous colors are still more common than the purple, cobalt blue (poison bottles, Milk of Magnesia early, and Vicks VapoRub), and aqua (Ball Mason jars) colors. These colors account for one in every 200-1000 pieces of sea glass found. Out of all sea glass colors, extremely rare ones are teal (Mateus wine bottles), gray, pink (Great Depression-era plates), yellow (1930s Vaseline containers), red (car tail lights/nautical lights), orange, and turquoise (tableware and art glasses). These account for every 1,000 to 10,000 collected pieces. The rarest sea glass colors that you can find are antique black glass originating from pirates' liquor bottles in the Caribbean over 500 years ago.