Newbie with a Coca cola bottle questions

Adapt · Jun 18, 2012

Hi everyone,

I just recently purchased a few Coca Cola bottles and I'm interested in some of the information embosed and painted on them. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I don't want to end up destroying something I have no idea about.

I have a bottle that has Coca Cola trade mark registered bottle pat D-105529 on the side and it also has a small number embosed underneath which is 54 with a weird shape and then 43 what does this mean? And it also has Oakland Calif on the bottom.

The other ones have printed/painted Coca Cola and Coke logo's some with embosed numbers and A and M on the sides.

Thank you in advance for any help that can be offered as I'm complete new to all of this

silverminerich · Jun 18, 2012

From what ive seen they usually want pictures of the bottles before they answer questions.All i can tell you is oakland is where the coke plant was ,and some have numbers that are dates the 29 might be the year.There are alot of sites that show the different coke bottles through the years and you can date them that way also.

cowseatmaize · Jun 18, 2012

From what ive seen they usually want pictures of the bottles before they answer questions.

Welcome to the forum. In a lot of cases that's true. In this one I think a redirect to http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/ETclanSETH114/bottlehistory.html should clarify most of the Q's.
I'm now going to move this to the soda category. It may get seen better but yes, they sound like they are all after 1900. [

]

RED Matthews · Jun 18, 2012

Hello I just recently bought a book "The Illustrated Guide to the Collectabibmles of COCA- COLA" By none other than Cecil Munsey - a great bottle book was also written by him. In that book pages 62 and 63 lists the bottles that Coca-Cola made and when the made the changes.

I have a half of a brass Coca-Cola mold that I have been thinking of selling,. It is for an Emhart ABM of the IS type. A couple 100 could take it away from me.

Bottles are a great hobby,. RED Matthews

SkinsFan36 · Jun 18, 2012

It's called a D-patent coke. Produced from 1938 to 1951.

bloodj2 · Jun 18, 2012

The D-patent coke was property of the Oakland bottler. The Number 54 is probably some internal quality assurance number, the symbol is the glass company that made the bottle, and the 43 is the date. So what you have is a 1943 D-Pat coke from Oakland. I think it's probably worth $3-$5, but another member might want to check me on that. Value of coke bottles is based on condition, style, and rarity of the town. Oakland being a larger town could be more common.

SODAPOPBOB · Jun 19, 2012

Adapt ~

Welcome to the forum.

The D-Patents were made/distributed between 1938 and 1951. So it appears that your embossed bottle would be from 1943 and not 1954 because that would be too late for a D-Patent. But I'm a little confused by the number 54 because mold numbers typically did not migrate to the side until 1951, and there is no plant number 54 that I know of. Are you certain you are seeing the numbers correctly? And does what you described as a weird shape look something like this? <(I)> Or something else?

As for the painted label (ACL) bottles, they were first made around 1955-56, and may or may not be dated or have a town name on them. The Oakland bottle (in mint condition) can often be purchased for as little as 50-cents to $1.00

Sodapopbob

daven2nl · Jun 25, 2012

Sodapopbob,

Here on Guam there are 1944/1945 coke bottles laying everywhere in the jungle, wherever American soldiers bivouacked from the liberation in 1944 onward. I see all sorts of weird numbers that don't match up to the documentation. I've stumbled across a few dozen 1944 Oakland bottles here but only kept a couple for my collection. One I'm looking at right now has a plant number of "5K" - meaning to the left of the logo is "5K", to the right is "44" for 1944. Lots of early 50's bottles have plan numbers in the 50's - for example "54 <|> 52".

I've seen people who claim the clear coke bottles were due to the shortage of copper in wartime. I'm not sure I believe that. I suspect they did it to identify bottles for overseas (for the troops). I can't tell you how many hundreds of examples I've seen - the 1944/1945's are usually all clear, but they are also mixed in with 1944/45 standard green embossed with cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle. There are quite a bit of more recent ones also, from the late 40's until the early 50's when the area I explore was vacated. Most of those are green but with no city embossing - again probably signifying overseas bottling.

I have a Philippine milk bottle that defies the Owen's Corning date info: Plant 23 (Los Angeles, supposedly started in 1959), year "1" with no decimal, supposedly indicating 1931 or 1941, but with the duraglas logo which means post 1940. I'm guessing 1951 due to the age of other bottles in the area.

Regards,
-Dave

SODAPOPBOB · Jun 25, 2012

daven2nl ~

Thanks for sharing your Guam info. If I lived there, I think I would be inclined to gather up every bottle I saw. It would be like an Easter egg hunt in the jungle. But instead of a basket, I'd probably use a wheelbarrel or dump truck if necessary. (Lol)

Regarding the marks, especially the ones you referred to as Plant Numbers, please be reminded that in 1951 the numbers on the sides or skirt of the bottles are "Date" and "Mold" numbers. At least this was the case with Owens-Illinois bottles whose mark was as you indicated, something like this 54 <(I)> 52 ... and that the date and mold number can be found on either side of the mark, thus often making it difficult to determine which is which.

SPB

SODAPOPBOB · Jun 25, 2012

Oops / PS ... I accidently posted and ran out of editing time before I was finished ...

I'd like to hear more about the 5K mark you mentioned. Is it just on the green bottles, or on both the green and the clear bottles?

Thanks.

SPB

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