Kovels' Bottle Price List by Ralph Kovel, Terry Kovel (1996, Paperback)

The mainstay of the price guide world, and the guides so many others are based on. In fact you can find the SAME errors that appear in most Kovel's Bottle guides, carried into guides by other authors, which is obvious evidence of plaugerism, but that's common in any field I guess. The problem with guides like this? Most price guides artificially inflate the market on purpose. The publishers know that if the new guide has all the same prices as the old one, because the market is fairly stabilized, which isn't uncommon with most bottles, that it won't sell. If the prices all jump just a little then it's a whole new ball game right? Remember they are in business to sell guides, NOT to help the hobby. Now a very short time into a budding interest in bottles, the average person soon realizes, that there are some bottles, which due to their products initial popularity, are annoyingly common. Sawyer's Crystal Bluing, Baker's (or most) extract bottles, Johnson's American Anodyne Liniment, Fletcher's Castoria, Hood's Sarsaparilla, Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription / Golden Medical Discovery etc.
These are usually the first cool looking and real antique bottles budding diggers and collectors come into contact with. Like most people, they want verification and validation for everything.
So it's off to Mr. Paperback or Barnes & Noble for reference material.
They're off to look up something common. The publishers know this.
ALL the major publishers know this and almost every major guide does the same thing.
Ambiguous descriptions and astronomical prices.
I can quote page number and line from any of the best selling, periodical price guides, on page after page of come-on pricing.
Something common listed, NO description of physical characteristics whatsoever, just a copy of the embossing and a price like two or three hundred bucks.
Now what this accomplishes, is that the average person standing in there, who thinks the bottle they just got at an auction or a flea market is worth hundreds, won't hesitate for a minute to spend 15 or 20 on a book when it verifies their find is golden. Of course the book doesn't tell you that the 500 dollar price tag is from a rare, auctioned, emerald green specimen of the commonly listed bottle, or something along those lines.
When people buy a guide, they will invariably buy the one with the highest price listed for the item, the publisher profits, mission accomplished. While I admire the Kovels greatly for their hard work in many fields, this book is nearly useless as a "price guide" due to extremely short and poor physical descriptions. The space for these given over in favor of packing in as many listings as possible.