The Force Was With Me

Back in June of last year, I posted the story of how I almost got the complete 24-can Star Wars Episode 1 set from 1999.  Now I will post the story of how I did get the set.

Well, there's not much story really.  I found the set on eBay for a price I was willing to pay and I bought it.

Now the only thing left is to find the gold Yoda can.  It was the rare 25th can in the set and if you got one you could redeem it for $20 cash!  I see them occasionally list on eBay so now I'll have to pay more attention to them.

UK Steel

I have a few cans from the United Kingdom.  And I have a lot of old steel cans.  But I didn't have any steel cans from the UK... until now.

I have Coke cans and Pepsi cans and Fanta cans from several different countries.  It's neat to see the different designs of those brands from different countries.  But in this lot, these are old brands from the 70's that I've never heard of before.  That's the coolest thing to me about them. 

Man #1:  "Would you like a can of Vimto?  Or Cresta?  Or maybe some Budgen?" 
Man #2:  "No thanks.  But do you have any Pico?"

See?  I've never heard that conversation here in the States.  I like my new cans.

A Six Pack of Cans I Didn't Have

The wife is not too keen on this whole can collection thing.  I've had to go back on a few words as far as how much space in the house the collection would take up and how much time would be involved in maintaining it.  So it always surprises me when she brings home a can she knows I don't have.  So last weekend she came home from the store and said she bought me a six pack of cans she knew I didn't have.  Excitedly I dug through the bags until I found this:

HAHA!  By the way, these "cans" are only 2" tall.  And filled with candy.

Updated Collection Site

I am by no means a web site designer, but even I knew my main collection site was a bit dull.  So I spent a few minutes last night and updated the home page.

The updated home page

A slide show was added in the upper right corner which cycles through some of my favorite cans.  I also added links to two of my other sites:

• The Soda Can Collection Blog - this website
• The Collective Brain podcast - a weekly podcast I host that usually has nothing to do with cans, soda, or my collection

And having just become a member of National Pop Can Collectors (NPCC), I added a line about that too.

The site is still nothing fancy, but it's a little better than it was.  And if you haven't checked it out, you should go there and dig around.  ALL of my cans are there...

Sprite Zero Blue

New

Call me crazy, but while out shopping last weekend I saw for the first time this new Sprite Zero design.

I don't know if this actually a new design or if it's just the first time I've seen it here locally, but a blue Sprite can looks AWESOME!  Even though we don't really drink soda in our house, I had to pick up a 12-pack for the can.

Old

I thought the old silver Sprite Zero can looked good, but not as good as the blue!

Holy Moly! Part 2

Last May I posted a story on how I acquired a certain Diet Coke can from church.  Well guess what happened again this morning...

During our Sunday school lesson, just as Abraham was preparing to sacrifice his son per God's instructions, I noticed this diet Canada Dry can sitting in front of the same woman as in my previous story.  I'm glad I knew how the sacrifice turned out because my mind started to wander.  Should I hope she would throw it away so I could get it later?  Should I just go up to her and ask her for it?  What if she wasn't done yet?  Church really is full of questions.

Finally I decided to be up front and explain my situation.  So after class, I told her about my can collection and asked if I could have the can.  She laughed and gave it to me, no problem!  She said she's used to that because when she and her husband go anywhere, he's always looking at the bricks... he has a brick collection!  The wife of a collector.  A tough breed indeed.

My Oldest Can So Far

1965 Nehi Orange

In my last post, I told how I bought a bunch of cans locally from a Craigslist ad earlier this week.  After researching the cans in that batch, I realized it contained the oldest can I have now.

This is a 1965 straight steel pull top Nehi orange soda.  When I bought the cans, the old man pointed this one out and said when he hears the name "Nehi" he thinks of orange soda because this is what he drank when he was younger.

In just a few years this can will be 50 years old!  It's hard to believe it's still in such good condition. 

What's on Craigslist?

I've made several can purchases through eBay and have traded inside and outside the USA, but I'm getting tired of paying shipping.  There are many great deals on eBay, but by the time you add shipping the deal isn't so great.  So now I'd like to find some local collectors to trade with or just to see someone else's collection. 

I woke up this morning and thought of Craigslist.  After doing a search locally for "soda cans" only one ad came up.  It had been posted on Feb 14... "19 soda cans from the 1970's for $10."  Had someone bought them yet?  I decided 5:30am was too early to call.

I called a few hours later and he still had them, so I stopped by after work and bought them.  But when I got there he didn't have just 19, there were 32! They need some cleaning but that's no problem.  And now I have some doubles I can use for trade.  So this turned out to be a good find!

Anyone need a Coke?

Organizing My Foreign Cans

Stack of trays

My foreign can collection is slowly growing.  So I have to keep changing how I display/store them.  Here is my current solution.

The dividers

Each tray is for a different region/continent.  Within each tray I have dividers separating the cans by country.  As my collection grows I can add more dividers and more trays.  And if the trays with dividers start to get too crowded, I can starting using one tray for each country.  But I think it will be a long time before I have to do that.

So for now, my foreign cans are organized and I can easily find any can I may be looking for.

Divided by country

$$ Hansen's on eBay $$

I was checking out soda can auctions on eBay today when I came across this listing for a 1984 Hansen's can...

I'm going to watch this one.  If it sells, I may be willing to part with my own "unique and rare" can for that price!

Happy Valentine's Day

A Can from Down Under

Back in November I posted that my daughter's piano teacher was headed to Australia to visit family for a while.  Before she left I asked her to bring me a can from there since my collection lacked any Australian cans.  She recently returned and with her was this Coca-Cola Zero black beauty...

A quick glance at this can reveals it has seen better days, but it was a long trip to get here and it now suffers from permanent jet lag.

But beyond that, I first noticed the can is a little taller than the cans here in the States.  This can is 375ml which is about 12.7 oz.  Instead of calories, they list  it as "energy" coming in at 5.3kJ.  And there's a sweet little message which says, "Listen closely & hear the happiness being unleashed when you open this can."  Our cans don't have such pleasant instructions here in the States.

That's one more continent I've collected from.  So, is anyone going to Antarctica soon?

After the Crash

A pretty can

The reason I haven't posted lately is because I recently experienced my first hard drive crash in over 18 years of PC computing!  Initially I thought I lost everything, including over 1700 pictures I've taken of my cans.  But after days of work we were able to save the data.  This week has been spent reinstalling/updating Windows, reinstalling all of my programs, moving the data back to the new drive, etc.  So tonight, I'm almost finished!  In a few more days things will be as they were two weeks ago before this nightmare happened.

And for you, here is a picture of a pretty can...

Home, Sweet Nursing Home

We just got back from visiting my grandma in a nursing home.  While sitting with her in the lounge, someone came in and got something out of the refrigerator.  That's when I saw the fridge was full of cans!!!

The snacks in the fridge are for visitors, right?  Well they were today.  During the course of the stay, the people in my group drank the various flavors of soda.  And by the time we left, I had scored all six different cans they had, none of which were in my collection.

Overall, it was a very productive visit.

1994 Pepsi Holiday Party Bunch

I'm in dangerous territory.  I bought something for my collection that goes beyond "just cans."  But this was too cool to pass up!

In 1994, Pepsi released this Pepsi Holiday Party Bunch truck display.  The sides of the truck, while in the upright position, show the delivery guys having a good ol' time in front of some of the collectible holiday cans. 

When the sides are folded down, each side displays four different cans.  The ninth can is located in the rear of the truck.

There are four Pepsi cans, two Diet Pepsi cans, one Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi can, one Mountain Dew can, and one Diet Mountain Dew can.

All of the cans are air filled, meaning they are sealed but never had any soda in them.  Store displays are usually air filled cans. 

I can't wait to see the eye rolls from my wife on this one...

Coca-Cola 2011 Holiday Can Set: Complete

Over the last few months, I acquired the 7.5oz "Stay Extraordinary" Diet Coke can.  I also got one of the infamous white "Arctic Home" Coca-Cola cans.  And when the red "Arctic Home" cans replaced the white, I got one of those.  And my sister gave me a holiday themed Diet Coke can on Thanksgiving.

Why am I mentioning these particular acquisitions?  Because a couple of weeks ago I found a press release online from Coca-Cola showing the five cans they considered to be in their 2011 Holiday Collection.  And it was the four cans I previously mentioned, plus the 7.5oz white "Arctic Home" can.

The problem was, by the time I realized I had 4 of the 5 cans, I couldn't find the 5th can!  It was last week that I seriously began hunting for the elusive 7.5oz polar bear can.  I had seen them plenty of times throughout November and December, but now that I wanted one they had all gone away to hibernate.  Once the white cans were discontinued, the grocery stores didn't replace their stock of the cans when they sold out.

But alas, on the way home from work last night, I tried a smaller grocery store in a small town and they had ONE 8-pack left!  I grabbed it, didn't even look at the price, and raced home to complete the collection.  And with that, here are the five Coca-Cola 2011 Holiday Cans...

My First Coconut Water

While doing a little research into the beverage industry last summer to get some kind of scope on the variety of cans that are on the market, I kept seeing one "style" of drink in particular over and over.  It was coconut water.

It really does seem like coconut water was/is a fad.  Since then, I've noticed drinks with aloe becoming popular (the next fad?).  But I was interested in what coconut water was like.  A lot of people raved about the taste and the health benefits.  The problem was I couldn't find any in a can.  A lot of the brands come in those squarish tetra packs or in bottles.  And if I was going to try something new I wanted a can for my collection to show for it!  And then at Big Lots earlier this week I found the above can of Siboney coconut water for $.70.

"chunky" water

Earlier this evening I poured it into a glass and knew I wasn't going to like it... I hadn't noticed the "with pulp" printed on the label.  Coconut flavor is ok, but I don't like physical coconut in my mouth.  But I tried it anyway.  It was about as unpleasant for me as a drink can be.  Whatever taste there may have been was overshadowed by the small chunks floating around in my mouth.  I was done with that!

I may try coconut water again some day (after enough time has passed to forget this experience) but it will have to be a brand WITHOUT PULP. 

The Cans from the Netherlands Are Here

On December 29, I posted about a can trade I made with someone in the Netherlands.  Guess what was waiting for me when I got home from work today...

One of the labels shows that the box was shipped on December 16.  So the box took almost one month to travel from Europe to the USA.

The cans were well packed, therefore there were only a couple with minor dents that popped right out.  My first impressions of the cans were that their sizes reminded me of the cans I got from the Middle East last September.  Most of them are 330ml (11oz) and six of them are little 150ml (5oz) cans.  In all there are sixty cans.

In the upcoming days/weeks, I plan on highlighting a few of these cans here on the blog with pics and info about them.

A big THANKS goes out to "Allcans"

at The Can Museum for initiating this trade.

South Korean Coca-Cola Surprise

Last week my cousin mentioned he had a Coca-Cola can with Asian writing in his basement for quite a while.  And I could have it.  So he brought it to me today...

It is a 250ml (8.45oz) extruded steel can from 2001 advertising the first Tomb Raider movie.  I did a little research online and found out it is from South Korea.  Which makes sense because my aunt has a friend who has lived in several countries overseas with the military and one of those countries was Korea.  Apparently she brought it to the USA with her during a visit and gave it to my aunt, who then gave it to my cousin, who then gave it to me.  And now the can rests among dozens of other Coca-Cola cans in my collection.

* The artwork behind the can in the picture above was done by my daughter when she was seven.

Jones Halloween Cans - Year 5 - 2009

Jones Soda, known for its unique soda flavors, started releasing Halloween-themed 8 oz cans in 2005.  They released four flavors each year until 2009.

Since there were no new flavors in 2009 and I can't find any different cans for these flavors on the internet, I assume they just re-released the same four-can packs from 2008 of Buried Pomegranate, Candy Corn, Lemon Drop Dead and Spooookiwi.

2009 Jones Halloween cans

Arctic Home Set Complete

You can read the details on this post I started back in October, but in summary, I now have both the white and red Arctic Home Coca-Cola cans.

For many years Coca-Cola has released a special holiday can featuring Santa Claus for Christmas.  But surprisingly these were Coca-Cola's holiday cans for 2011. For 2012, I say, "Bring Back Santa Claus!"