Astonishing Sea Glass Found in Many Beaches Throughout the World

The broken glass that we’ve been throwing since centuries ago, the ocean waves have been transforming it into plenty of colorful gemstones that now we call “sea glass”.

Entire beaches of these small gemstones are found throughout the world. The broken glass has been tumbling in ocean waves for centuries to end up as amazing little stones.

Glass is made of sand, so it is a natural material that after being eroded into very tiny pieces, it turns back into the sand again. Before it turns into sand, glass is tumbled by the ocean into small pieces that become colorful stones.

There are a lot of sea glass beaches that can be found in Scotland, northern England, Hawaii, in Northeastern United States, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda, Nova Scotia, Italy, southern Spain, and Australia.

Broken glass transformational process

The sea glass derives from bottles that have been broken, from tableware, and shipwrecks. The glass has been rolling and tumbling by the ocean’s waves for decades smoothing and rounding its sharp edges. That way the glass lost its smooth surface and gained its frosted appearance. This process lasts from 30 to 100 years. Those who collect the sea glass know from what time and from where the glass originates from, especially its color.

Sea glass colors

The colors that are most common in the sea glass are brown, kelly green, and white. They come from juice bottles, modern beer, glasses, plates, windows, and windshields.

The colors that are not so common,  but still are often found include amber, jade, ice blue, forest green, and lime green. They come from whiskey bottles, medicine bottles, and ink bottles that date back to the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Lime green glass originates from soda bottles from the 1960s. These colors are found in every 25 to 100 sea glass pieces.

Less common colors are cobalt blue, purple, and aqua. The cobalt blue and purple colors are derived from early Magnesia and milk bottles, Vick VapoRub containers, and poison bottles. Aqua colored sea glass stones originate from Ball Mason jars. One of these colors is found in every 200 to 1,000 pieces.

Pink, gray, yellow, turquoise, red, and orange are some of the rarest colors. Pink and gray come from the plates from the Great Depression-era. Yellow comes from the Vaseline containers from the 1930s. Turquoise comes from art glass and tableware. The red color comes from nautical and tail lights. They account for one in every 1,000 to 10,000 pieces found.

The color that is the hardest to find among the sea glass is the black color. The antique black glass is more than 500 years old, and it is believed that it originates from liquor bottles that pirates used in the Caribbean.