Dear LPG, 

In this day and age, I hope that all of us see the maintenance of one’s personal hygiene as important and I have to say the task of getting it just right is something that mums and dad’s do to start with.

They are the ones that check behind the ears and insist on keeping us, soap and water in close and regular contact with each other.  But then we ladies often get to a stage in life where just looking and smelling clean is not quite enough. 

Perfume is the obvious answer for a while and while buying your own is one way to go, many of us ladies would find the gifting of it a perfect benchmark when it came to measuring the extent of a potential boyfriend’s affections.  

But as you get older they don’t really bother quite as much and you find yourself back at the perfume counter if you want to continue to smell just so. 

We all know that perfume is big business with high street shops dedicated to selling nothing else and I have no doubt that when we older ladies find ourselves going through our draws we often come across many of the really unique and beautiful bottles that have been made over the years.

When the perfume is all gone do you just throw those pretty little bottles away.  Many of them can only be described as really beautiful and far too pretty for that.  There is something else that it might be worth knowing.  Depending on the value those boyfriends wanted to display when buying the present and, of course their artistic tastes, you may well have held onto a bottle which is now considered quite valuable.  Did you know that some of those bottles are now as valuable as the perfumes inside them ever were? I found some interesting information on the most valuable bottles and it is also to be noted that as the smell of our gentlemen has become more relevant, some aftershave bottles might be worth hanging onto for a bit longer too.  After all, what is not so special today might be the vintage bottle of choice in years to come. You might have your great-grandchild’s family heirloom hidden in the back of a draw at this very moment. 

Luckily, because the world around us smells so much cleaner in general these days (in spite of all its global warming and odourless pollutants that have taken the place of the smelly ones),  we don’t really need to sweeten our personal space quite so much but, even if you don’t wear it every day, there is something special about using a little when you are all dressed up on those special occasions and, according to the internet some of those old perfume bottles may well be worth more than you think.  While they are often so beautiful to look at, it is worth checking the value of some of the more distinct ones.  So, before you consider throwing them out, it might be worth checking the value of the bottle; you might just have one which is seriously worth something… 

 DB, Sydenham 

DB shares a little on the subject…

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