Remember these COKE Caps

Every Saturday morning I would walk with my Mom to go down town to the butcher the one with saw dust on the floor. They would let go through the caps These are the two caps I saved. Sorry for the blurry photos

[steve B]

Yep, one of the first sports things I tried collecting. We went to a cookout and being 4 I was fascinated by bottlecaps with pictures inside. I rounded up a couple pockets full before mom found out and refused to let me bring home "dirty old bottlecaps".

I have a pretty good collection of them now

Steve B

[alanu]

Love these caps. I only have a few, really like the CFL one's that have the pictures on the outside of the caps.

[okmaybent@aol.com]

They also did Football. If you got them all you got a football. I got all but about 30 of them. So I DREW those in and my mom and dad drove me somewhere in CT to a redemption place. At first they werent going to give me the football because I didnt have all the caps. But my mom convinced them that it was too much to ask for a 7 year old and told them how hard I had tried.

I got the YA Tittle football and this will come as no surprise to this bunch but I still have the football...although its far from mint.

One of the ways I got more caps is that our church had a Coke machine. People would buy a Coke and then snap off the cap on the little bottle opener on the machine. The cap would drop down into a hole. I tied a magnet to a string and then I hung around after church (my parents were Sunday school teachers). I stuck the string down the hole and pulled up the caps one by one.

Dont get me started with what I did in 1975 when Hostess had the cards on the bottom of boxes.

[mckinneyj]

I think it was '67 - needed 5 complete sets of the football caps to redeem for a football at the local coke distributor. We used to ride around on our bikes and visit all the local gas stations that had coke machines out front. We tied magnets on the end of strings and would dip them down into the bucket under the recessed bottle opener and retrieve the spent caps - station owners didn't care. Several of us completed the 5 sets and got footballs within a few weeks that fall...

[David W]

I also would either use the magnet on a string. But the most efficient way to get bottle caps was just to ask the janitor who restocked the machine at our school to save them. he'd dump them in a box for us kids, and we'd stuff our pockets at school the next day.

We used to collect all caps, and trade them, not just sports related one.

[Aquifer]

I remember these, too, and a really fun story about them was part of Marvin Miller's Book "A Whole Different Ballgame." As he told it, the owners were doing all they could to block the formation of the MLB players union and Miller, in his first year, had almost zero money to fund operations. But they were able to run this tiny promotion with Coke, airbrushing out the cap logos because the owner's wouldn't allow it, and it was just enough sponsorship money to keep the fledgling union alive that first year. We know what happened after that. I have a couple that I keep just for that connection.

[hcv123]

There is another amazing thread on here on these including a breakdown of more back variations than you realize! Don't have time to search now.

[frankbmd]

I wonder if anyone broke the bottles, so that their caps would be in unbent mint condition. Mom wouldn't have gone for that idea, but I'd bet you would have a unique collection today, perhaps worth enough to repurchase the soda you lost as a kid.

Footnote: The young fellas may not realize that there were no twist off caps back then.

[steve B]

I have a few that were never put on a bottle.

Steve B

[Volod]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

I wonder if anyone broke the bottles, so that their caps would be in unbent mint condition. Mom wouldn't have gone for that idea, but I'd bet you would have a unique collection today, perhaps worth enough to repurchase the soda you lost as a kid.

Footnote: The young fellas may not realize that there were no twist off caps back then.

As a kid, probably would not have thought of it, but you could take a flathead screwdriver to the caps and carefully lift the edges so as to remove them without bending the cap very much. But, if I wasn't concerned about the Hank Aaron rookie card in my bike spokes, a bent popbottle cap sure wouldn't have bothered me in 1954.