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tolmanbridge

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I would like to build a collection of Alberta soda bottles, preferably ginger beers, hutches, blob tops and older embossed bottles. What would those here recommend I try to find? I don’t usually see the older bottles available anywhere and don’t know much about Alberta companies.Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 

CanadianBottles

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From what I understand Alberta is a tough one for that sort of thing because there just aren't that many bottles from that era out there. Embossed bottles tended to come about along with urbanization, and Alberta was not very urbanized until the 20th century. Saskatchewan has the same problem, while BC and Manitoba have a better selection of bottles since they urbanized earlier. There are some Alberta sodas out there, but I'd expect to pay somewhere in the three figures for almost all of them. Not sure if there are any affordable ones from that era apart from the multi-city JJ McLaughlins which mention Edmonton.

This book shows the known stoneware ginger beers from Alberta: https://anyflip.com/qbni/fspv/basic/51-100

Sodasandbeers lists (mostly without pictures) a number of them as well, although it excludes syphons which make up a pretty large proportion of available Alberta sodas from that era: http://www.sodasandbeers.com/SABFin...da&Start_Year=&End_Year=&Get_Firms=Find+Firms

This Kijiji ad shows a number of Alberta syphons along with a large list of bottlers, not sure if those all have known bottles or not though: https://www.kijiji.ca/v-art-collect...on-seltzer-bottles-top-dollar-paid/1616119516

If you want to collect local bottles on a more reasonable budget, I'd suggest maybe looking into milks or pharmacy bottles. You'll be able to find a wider selection for much lower prices. Although ACL milks from Canada can get pretty pricey as well.
 

tolmanbridge

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Thanks for the information. It is very difficult to find many bottles from Alberta that have any age to them. I had some Alberta Milk bottles in the past but currently I have just the one from Red Deer where I live now. I also have a couple druggist bottles from Red Deer but really am focusing on older soda or ginger beer bottles which makes it very difficult. ACL bottles seem a lot easier to find and I've had a number of them but, in order to reduce the size of my collection, I am sticking with embossed bottles. I did manage to get ahold of a Calgary Aerated Water Company Statue Ginger Beer bottle. It cost me quite a bit and has a lot of crackled glaze but, other than the one in the ginger beer book, it is the only one I have ever seen. Plus it looks really nice. I also was able to get ahold of one Syphon bottle from Lethbridge so I decided to watch for and collect them as well. If anyone here has any items like these available for trade or sale, please let me know. Don't know if I can afford them but I can always dream.
 

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