The beer can celebrates 75 years

Antiques Road Show for Breweriana

Bring your old beer and brewery items down to Brixx for a FREE appraisal.

Experts will be on hand to look at your old beer cans, trays, coasters, caps, bottles, openers, lights, signs, prints, pictures, steins, or whatever you have. If it is related to beer or brewing, we will have an expert there to tell you what it is worth.

The event will be held at Brixx's Ice Company, 500 E. First Street Dayton, Ohio.

Saturday, Jan. 30 from 12 noon to 5 pm

Beer specials will also be available during the event

If you have questions regarding the event, contact Rick Ordeman,

President of the Miami Valley Chapter at 937-558-6993, or rdordeman@gmail.com.

If you need directions to the event, contact Brixx Ice Company at 937-222-2257 or check out their website at http://brixxicecompany.com/

What is Breweriana?

Breweriana encompasses anything related to beer, breweries and bars around the globe, from beer cans, to matchbooks to neon signs. The value of items is all about supply and demand and many collectors specialize in certain themes. The most ardent collectors are in the U.S.

Breweriana from US. craft microbreweries have been seeing a lot of attention of late from newcomers to the hobby due to the fact that their advertising budget is limited and regional, the costs of collecting is much more reasonable and as an investment the potential of appreciating value is expected.

Bottoms Up

Old antique steel cans tend to show their age with rust, especially along the seams, so collectors prefer that cans be empty. If you plan on saving a particular can, even one of the newer aluminum ones, and want to empty it, open it from the bottom. This preserves the visible top portion in original condition.

Important Local Beer Can History

In 1959, Ermal Fraze invented the pop-top can (or easy-open can) in Kettering, Ohio. Fraze figured out how to make a beer can-top opening system that would be easy enough for anyone to pull, but still strong enough to hold against the can's internal pressure.

Fraze sold the invention’s rights to Alcoa Aluminum and Iron City Brewing tested the first of the zip tops with success, and soon after Schlitz followed suit. The first pop-top design was not perfect, however, as sharp edges appeared on both the tab and the opening, bringing complaints from customers about cut fingers, lips and even noses. Improvements saw rounded edges on the tab, and "smile beads" on either side of the opening to keep the beer from flowing out the sides of one’s mouth. The words "Lift Tab, Pull Open" were also added … just in case this new technology was too confusing.

Thinking of collecting?

Historic Dayton area breweries and brands of note:

Miami Valley Brewing Company brands:

Overcoming consumer reluctance or distrust with a promise of safety, purity and convenience was done masterfully by American Can. However, it would take years and millions of dollars—and overcoming a four-year hiatus during World War II—for the can makers to prevail; 25 years before it surpassed its closest competitor, the bottle, in annual units produced. An estimated 160 million beer cans were produced in 1935, most of them American’s “Keglined.” More than a trillion beer cans have been manufactured since, according to statistics provided by the CMI, an industry trade organization.

Source: BCCA

You may not realize it, but if you have anything from a brewery on display or stashed away somewhere, you are a collector of breweriana.

Some people get started by taking home free advertising stuff from bars or saving some favorite beer cans, and before they know it, their walls are stacked floor-to-ceiling with thousands of dollars worth of vintage collectibles.

But perhaps the most popular beer collectible is the can.

January 24 marks the 75th anniversary of the beer can, so breweriana collectors across the globe will raise a toast to the day when cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale first went on sale in Richmond, Va. Those cumbersome cans weighed over 3 ounces, were lined with beeswax so the beer wouldn’t taste metallic and needed a “church key” can opener to perforate the top. The can was accompanied by an illustrated brochure on how to operate it properly.

Before 1935, food products such as coffee, soup, lard, fish, fruit, vegetables and some (noncarbonated) fruit beverages were packed in cans. But not yet beer.

The bottle making industry launched a smear campaign at the time, calling the beer can just a “fad.”

Having a good-condition can from the Diamond Anniversary era is worth around $2,000.

But, there are four ultra rare cans (Rosalie and Tiger from Chicago, Waldorf Bock from Cleveland and Class from Philadelphia) that if in good condition have a standing offer in the low six-figure range if they ever come up for sale, according to Bob Kates of Beavercreek.

Kates, whose entire basement living area is floor-to ceiling in breweriana, caught the can collecting “bug” 44 years ago with a couple of 16-ounce Coors cans. Today, he has an estimated 1,000 items, specializing in defunct Ohio breweries.

Prohibition was a bleak time in the nation’s history, but afterward, breweries began colorful advertising campaigns on everything they could — cans, trays, lights, clocks, signs, ashtrays and the like to get their businesses rebuilt, and to fight off the large national brands, thus providing much of today’s collectibles.

But by the ’70s, only mega-brewers Bud, Miller and Coors had knocked out most of the regional breweries and the only things left were memories, and of course what we now know as breweriana.

Prior to Prohibition, advertising was not as prevalent — beer was more localized and less packaged. So, it’s a matter of supply and demand as with most breweriana, and pre-Prohibition lithographs can command a price of $20,000.

Local collector Denny Thayer has one of the most extensive national collections in the Miami Valley. He got his start while a student at Miami University in the late ’60s, saving a wide variety of colorful Cincinnati-brewed beer cans after parties, then collecting Cleveland-based beer cans when he went home. “I began looking in odd places, and even found an old Leisy’s can (which holds high sentimental value in his vast basement collection) where my dad kept nuts and bolts.”

Today, he even has a houseboat named “Good Fer What Ale’s Ya” that is decked out in nautical-themed breweriana.

Both Thayer and Kates are longtime members of the Miami Valley chapter of The Brewery Collectibles Club of America, hosts of the Antique Beer & Brewery Item Appraisal Event from noon to 5 p.m. Jan. 30, in the upstairs of the Brixx Ice Company, 500 E. First St., Dayton.

After 75 years, what lies ahead for the beer can?

BCCA Miami Valley Chapter President Richard Ordeman: “I see the beer can, in general, evolving to replace the bottle completely. Glass is too fragile, and the shape of the bottle wastes space for storage and shipping. In addition, people often hurt their finger or break a nail opening the pop-top on a can. Based on these observations, I foresee the can evolving to a can with the same or similar shape as the current can, but the lid would be threaded to allow it to unscrew off of the can. This could even be resealable, although I don’t know why anyone would ever need to reseal a beer can.”

Only time will tell where technology takes the beer can in the next 75 years. It has been around for so long, it’s easy to take it for granted.

But not for those who passionately collect them.