Another Day, Another Flea Market

My wife and I spent another day at another flea market and a dozen antique shops yesterday.  The first soda can find was an old cone top Pepsi can.  They were asking $75 for it but I'm not ready to take that big of a step for my collection yet.  I'll stick to the tabbed cans for now.

It can be frustrating searching for soda cans because I don't see very many at these places.  But there are TONS of bottles and beer cans. 

I did find a couple of Coke cans but they were sports-related and I'm just not into sports (despite yesterday's post about RC baseball cans.)  Plus they were wanting $5 a piece for them and they just aren't worth that to me.

But in the end, I did manage to find an aluminum bottle I didn't have yet.

I also found a kitschy statue of a Japanese person (I set it next to my new aluminum bottle to demonstrate its size.)

 

I'm not sure which my wife is more displeased with; another can in the house or the "hideous" treasure I found.

RC Baseball

Last weekend my mother-in-law called from a flea market where she found a guy selling RC cans with baseball players on them.  I told her there were two sets; one was from 1977 and had the players' stats/info in a square text box and the other set was from 1978 and had the stats/info printed on a picture of a baseball.

I pulled up my can collection website and had her start reading off the names of the cans he had.  In the end, he had ten cans that I didn't.

 

 

But I have them now.

I am in no hurry to complete these two sets.  I now have 15 of the 70 cans from 1977 and I have 54 of the 100 cans from the 1978 set.  It's a slow process, but hopefully someday I'll have complete collections from both years.

Gold Yoda and Storm

While on a recent flea market and antique mall road trip, my wife and I checked out a shop in Washington, Indiana.  I was drooling over the vast selection of boarded Star Wars figures when she found me and said there were a lot of soda cans near the back of the store.  So I made my way there and found this:

It was a selection of cans from the 1999 Pepsi Star Wars Episode One 24-can set.  Since I already have the set, most of the cans didn't interest me.  Except for two.  Buried among the bright blue and white cans was a gold can.  I picked it up and realized I was holding the rare 25th can... the Gold Yoda!  I've seen these go for $20 and more on eBay and just wasn't willing to spend that much.  I knew I would eventually come across it in my travels.  The next question was "how much?"  I turned the unopened can over and saw a tag for $5.  It was mine!!!

Also in the pile was a Jar Jar Binks can I had never seen.  It was a Pepsi Storm can!  What the what?  So I bought it for $1.  I researched it when we got home and found out Storm was Pepsi's 1998-1999 attempt at a lightly carbonated, caffeinated lemon-lime drink.  Since this was being tested during their Star Wars campaign, they released a Storm and Light Storm Star Wars can (those two cans were not numbered since they weren't part of the main 24-can set).  Storm never made it out of the test market.  It was dropped in favor of Pepsi's caffeine-free Slice, which was reformulated and renamed Sierra Mist in 2000.

Yoda is famous for saying, "Do or do not, there is not try."  Well I didn't just "try" to get the gold Yoda, I went out and "did"!!! 

Mountain Dew Green Label

In 2007 Mountain Dew released a small line of limited edition aluminum bottles featuring artwork from a range of artists (including tattoo artists) called Green Label.  From the information I have found, they continued the aluminum bottles for just a couple of years.  If they still produce them, please leave a comment and let me know.

I was aware Mountain Dew had cool-looking aluminum bottles, but it wasn't until last weekend that I finally saw one in person at a flea market in Evansville, Indiana.  The booth had two of the same design, but one had a dent in the side.  They both had $1 price tags, so I grabbed the nicer of the two and started my Mountain Dew Green Label collection.

This bottle is called "Reflections of Dew" from 2008

I am staying away from glass bottles because I do NOT need another "wing" of my collection, but I have grandfathered these in because they are made of aluminum.  I will not go to eBay and start buying all the Green Labels I can find (not yet, at least), but I will continue to look for them to pop up in antique malls and flea markets.

Burnt Prairie Trashed Cans

The first antique shop my wife and I visited on our recent vacation was called Burnt Prairie Antique Mall.  As we walked in the door, I noticed a large cardboard container that said "Please recycle" and it was full of cans!  A quick glance inside revealed a couple of cans I didn't have...

Later, while paying for the things we bought, I mentioned to the cashier lady I had a can collection.  I said we weren't from the area and I noticed a couple of cans in the recycle box that I didn't have.  She handed me a plastic bag and cheerfully said, "Take what you want."

I really wanted to dig in deep, but I was already getting stares from a few other shoppers, so I just casually perused the selection at the top of the heap.  I found a Diet Pepsi can and a Mtn Dew can both with an ad/coupon for Holiday World.  I also found two more Dr Pepper tuition winner cans, bringing the total in my collection to three now.

My vacation was off to a good start!!!

Home from Vacation

My wife and I got home from a short vacation today.  We took a road trip around southern Indiana and southern Illinois going to various flea markets and antique shops.  This was my two-day take.

Among the "treasures" I found was a gold Yoda can, a cool Mountain Dew aluminum bottle, a couple more Dr Pepper tuition cans and many more! 

I hope to highlight some of these finds in detail in the next week or two.

Another Birthday in the Can

I recently had another birthday.  One of the presents my wife gave me was this Monster Energy can (I drank it today at work.)

 

What's so special about it?  Well, it's a can that I didn't have.  AND the fact that my wife, who would rather cash in my collection at a recycler for a trip to Bath & Body Works, gave it to me!  It was a happy birthday.

Fright Fest

2010

My favorite month of the year is here.  October is when all the ghosts come out and things get spook and creepy.  And if I could only go to Six Flags one time each year it would be during their Fright Fest.  And so I've begun a sub-collection of Coca-Cola discount cans for Fright Fest. 

2011

Halloween 2011 was the first Halloween since I started my can collection so it was easy to get the 2011 can.  And I lucked out and found a 2010 can at work in April of last year.  And now the 2012 can has been released, so I snatched it up when I saw one at work last week.

The 2010 and 2011 ads were printed on a black background which I prefer over 2012's silver background.  The black background takes better pictures. 

2012

It'll be easy to collect a can each year from now on, but it will be a challenge to find the cans from 2009 and earlier.  I'm not in full-search mode but if I stumble upon them I'll certainly add them to my collection.