Road Trip to Arkansas (part 1 of 2)

Another one of my hobbies is paranormal investigation.  My group was recently invited to investigate the Clayton House in Fort Smith, Arkansas, so we loaded up the van and hit the road last weekend.

On the way, we stopped in Bentonville, AR, for gas.  I ran inside the store and found a brand of energy drink I hadn't seen before... Nuclear.  I think there are more than the two flavors I got, but those are the only two they had left.

It was only fitting that I waited to take their picture in front of the Clayton House later that evening.  We found quite a bit of energy in that house.  I'd like to thank Rick for making it happen!

Q1 Team Meeting

I've posted a few times about the quarterly team meetings at my work.  (here, here and here)

A couple of nights ago we had our team meeting for the first quarter of 2014.  And again, I walked away with some souvenirs.

 

What surprised me were the Pepsi cans.  I had no idea a new design had been released.  Someone asked if I thought it was cool or just different.  I wouldn't say it's cool, but it sure is nice to see something different!  The Sierra Mist can is real similar to the last "new" one I had, but this one has a green calorie marker as opposed to the white one on the older can.

Another side of the new Pepsi cans

Hopefully in three months I'll have a picture of my Q2 team meeting souvenirs.

Shiver Me Tea-mbers!

I love a good pirate ship.  Who doesn't?  So I was pretty excited when I saw these nautical-themed cans at Big Lots a couple of years ago.  Not only did the colors catch my eye, but I love the maps and pirate ships and anchors and mermaids and Asian writing... etc.

 

The cans I have are copyright 2010 under the Admiral Beverage Company.  But a quick Google search shows Admiral Iced Tea as a product of Hansen's Natural, which has been around for many years.  The www.admiralbev.com website on the can no longer works, so my guess is the company "sank" and Hansen's bought them out.

Regardless of who owns the company, I've only drank a couple of the flavors.  They taste ok; not good enough for me to track down more yet not bad enough to pour down the drain.  For a mediocre product, the packaging is Arrr-Right in me book.

So the next time you decide to crack Jenny's tea cup, make it an Admiral Iced Tea.

A Three Year Retrospective

Today marks the 3rd anniversary of the start of my can collection.  So with the help of some recently found pictures, I will look back at how the collection grew.  These pictures were taken in May 2011, just a month after I started my collection. 

All 12 oz cans

Back then I kept my cans in three or four boxes in a closet.  One box held blue cans and green cans.  Another held red, orange and yellow cans.  And so on.  I had them organized my color (hence the rainbow in these pics).

But I quickly ran out of room in that closet.  It was in late June 2011 that I built my first set of shelves.  A couple of days later I had all of my cans displayed.  It was around that time that I took the pics that are used as the background on this blog. 

All cans of every size

The cans kept coming.  The collection kept growing.  I built more shelves.  Then I added even more shelves in the basement and expanded to the garage.  And now I have started using one cardboard box per brand because I can't display them all any more.

You know, when I review my three years of collecting in a quick summary like this, I worry that in three more years I may have to live in a camper because the house will be too full of cans.  If that happens, you can be sure I'll write a post about it :)

World's Fair Beer

I intentionally stay away from collecting beer cans because soda cans already take up too much time.  But tonight I made an exception.

My grandpa died back in the 1990's.  And my grandma died last fall.  So now my parents are going through Grandma and Grandpa's house and pulling out anything the family wants to keep.  In a few weeks everything that's left is going to be auctioned with the house.  So tonight I got my turn in the house to grab any keepsakes or mementos.

In the refrigerator was this can of World's Fair Beer.  As far as I know Grandpa rarely drank, so I was a bit surprised to see this in his fridge.  At first I said, "Too bad it's not a soda can."  But then I decided in this case, a beer can is ok.  It would be another thing to remember Grandpa by.

Upon doing a little research, this can is from the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee.  I seriously doubt he went to it, so it remains a mystery why he had it.  But it's still full.  So I will soon be draining the can of its 32 year-old contents.  Probably the oldest draining I've done.

There was another question that crossed my mind.  "Was it Grandma's?"

Website Pick #3: CanMuseum

On the first of every month I will feature one of my favorite can websites.  

Please send an email if you have a website for consideration.

 www.CanMuseum.com

One of the first can websites I found when I started my collection was CanMuseum.  It is, as far as I know, the largest online can catalog in the world with over 55,000 cans pictured as of today.  And the best part is you can actually contribute and be part of the can collecting community there.

The idea behind the website is one all collectors can appreciate.  Most of us don't have enough time to dedicate to our collection.  This website was created to be a catalog, or reference guide, where collectors can keep track of their collection online without doing all the work on their own.  Each can you have in your collection that is added by another collector saves you a lot of work.  And it also works the other way.  Cans you have added to the site can be used by other collectors.  You can also create a trade list so people know what cans you are willing to part with. 

The forums are a great place to learn about cans, share pics of your treasures, ask questions or buy/sell/trade.  I've made a couple of trades that started in the forums.  I've had email conversations with both founders of the site.  I even traded sixty USA cans for sixty European cans with one of the founders which really helped kick off the foreign wing of my collection.

I've been a member for a couple of years and have added over 100 cans to the site (with plans to add more).  What are you waiting for?  It's a great resource, it's fun and it's FREE! 

"Creating the best online reference guide for cans is not the work of only a few collectors. We all have to work together on it."  - Allcans, CanMuseum admin