American
Sodas & Beers Project:Since 1974, I have been collecting and researching Philadelphia's early soda and beer bottles. In 1992, I wrote a small book on pontiled soda and beer bottles from this city. This book sold out and I have not reprinted it. In 1995, I decided to increase the scope of my research and started to document "important" pre-crown soda and beer bottles from around the United States and Canada and a year later published American Sodas & Beers: The Work Sheet.
Ever since, I have been maintaining a database of these bottles and plan to publish something in the future. To be considered an "important," pre-crown soda or beer bottle, I used criteria that would select the earliest and many of the collectable bottles in North America.
Many states did not exist when the first soda bottles were produced, so the basic cut off point is where a reasonable number of bottles can be included. This is based on sheer numbers. For example, Alaska has only a handful of pre-crown soda bottles and City of Philadelphia alone has over 5,000. Clearly, All of Alaska's bottles are important to the history of bottling in that state, where in Philadelphia, a line had to be drawn. That line was at the transition to pontiled bottles and this would include almost 600 bottles. So, in Philadelphia all pontiled soda and beer bottles are included. In other states, this same line was drawn and in others a line was drawn at Hutchinson bottles.
However, there are other important bottles in Philadelphia and other states that were produced after their line that are important and highly collectable. In Philadelphia there are smooth based cobalt bottles and rarely used closures like the Codd and ABC Patents. So a secondary set of criteria were set up include those bottles. If a soda or beer bottle is to be included in this work it must be a pre-crown bottle and be included in one of the following criterion:
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All pontiled bottles |
| - | All blue colored bottles |
| - | All Hutchinson bottles in colors other than aqua or clear |
| - | All Hutchinson bottles with a product name (e.g., Coca-Cola, Celery-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Koco-Nola, etc.) |
| - | All Baltimore Loop Seal and champagne beer bottles in colors other than aqua, clear, or amber |
| - | All amber porter beer bottles |
| - | All flavored beer, round-bottom, torpedo, and ten-pin shaped bottles |
| - | All three-mold and amber mid-western porter bottles |
| - | All early export beer shaped bottles (e.g., Cooper & Conger) |
| - | All marked patent bottles or those with modifications in the glass excluding Hutchinson and Baltimore Loop Seals and including ABC, Roorbach, Codd, Twitchell Floating Ball, Gravitating, Albertson, Matthews, Bullet, Inside Screw, Arthur Christian, marble stoppers, Bottle Stopper, Thasmo, etc. |
| - | All Territory bottles |
| - | All pre-crown bottles from the following states: Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah |
| - | All Pre-Hutchinson bottles from the following states: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin |
If you think that you have a rare bottle that falls under on of the conditions above, please contact me. I currently have over 4,000 bottles listed and I am missing details on many of the bottles that I do have recorded. You can view a listing of Philadelphia Bottles that are important if you click here.
Thanks,
Tod
