Earliest ACL Royal Crown Cola redux

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morbious_fod

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SODAPOPBOB said:
P.S. ~ P.S. And if the embossing of a small "G" began in 1932, and then "advanced," then is he saying the letter(s) were used on their bottles continuously from 1932 to 1936?

All the while ignoring the August 1931 ad which clearly shows the G embossed in the lip of the bottles.
 

morbious_fod

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squirtbob said:
Morb, Thanks for posting all the pictures. You have some very very nice RC Bottles. All three bottles that I have with the lip characters we are discussing look exactly like your previous lip post. It is certainly open to interpretation as to whether it is a 1 or an I ...as you can tell there are no horizontal markings on the character to help us. While I can see why Glenshaw might use G1 to mark its first year date marking acl's, I don't currently see how that works on the 7UP bottles I mentioned when you consider the advertising. I'm not expert on the Upper 10 bottles, I just know that some features of an OI Upper 10 bottle from 1937 match my glenshaw Upper 10...but that is not conclusive because I don't know much about Upper 10 ad historyI guess I should also note here concerning the Glenshaw chart that we always refer to ... I have a"Y" bottle squirt and it is certainly not double dated as the author of that article mentions. My "Y" has a 45 on the base and that would be impossible for that particular bottle. It has all caps block letters in the splash and the advertising on the back was only used from 1952 to 1957.If we keep plugging along maybe we'll find the solution. Hopefully others will post more info and pictures. I certainly appreciate all the info you have listed.

Those aren't my bottles they were the ones from the original poster.
 

morbious_fod

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dbv1919 said:
Morbious- I started the original post with the pics on the white shelf. I think the 1937 year was a transition year for the neck debossing as I have one 37 with the pointed star and one with the flattened star over it. 1939 was the year they started the neck acl's. The neck acls are different from all the latter acls in that they have royal RC crown on the neck as opposed to just royal crown. I posted a pic of one on the original post on page 7 if that helps.

I was referring to the pointed pyramid with no star which if their claim is correct is a 1937; however, I don't think it works out from a neck embossing evolution standpoint. Yeah I realized that the 1939 was the first year of the neck acl, and the only year to include the RC under the arched Royal Crown which makes them very easy to spot. I own one from Kingsport Tennessee pictured below.

[attachment=12ozroyalcrown39.jpg]
 

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morbious_fod

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Just working a possible transition from 1936 to 1937 angle, could you get us a better photo of the 1937 bottle right beside the 1936? The one with the crud in the neck. I can't be sure what I'm seeing on that embossing due to that stuff.
 

morbious_fod

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While still working the possible transition bottle angle I ran across this post in the original thread. This is a green glass RC in pointed pyramid embossed bottle from Owens Illinois dated 1937. So this means that G 1/I could indeed be GI, and that my bottle could be a very early 1937 bottle. Like I said most 1937 Royal Crown bottles you see have the star above the flattened pyramid, thus these pointed pyramid bottles were eliminated by a running change in early 1937.

Never let it be said that I can't be mistaken, and willing to admit as much when I find evidence to possibility of the contrary.

That being said, there is still the evidence of the use of the RC in a pyramid being September 1935 from the trademark filing itself. So the possibility that there is a 1935 Royal Crown Cola bottle is still very possible; however, it would have only been in production for a couple of months.

download.axd
download.axd
 

morbious_fod

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SODAPOPBOB said:
I am sincere when I say there is a part of me that wants to believe the code chart is spot on, and yet there is another part of me that calls it into question. My uncertainty primarily stems from the fact that of the numerous accounts I have seen regarding the code charts that not in a single one of them do they mention anything whatsoever about the double-letter codes. And some of the accounts I'm referring to were compiled by what I would call advanced researchers. Surely those advanced researchers examined numerous Glenshaw bottles and surely they came across at least a few of the double-letter examples. And yet, even with this said, there is no mention of the double-letters. Its as if they just ignored the G's and continued as if the second letters were the only ones that counted. If you go back and read the entire page where the code chart is shown, you will see in the second paragraph where it says ...

"PSBCA [Painted Soda Bottle Collectors Association] member David Meinz cracked the odd code after visiting the Glenshaw Glass Co. in 1989."

And just so you'll know, the Glenshaw factory was still in operation in 1989 and still is under it's new name, Kelman Bottles, LLC, so its not as if David Meinz was just stumbling around an old deserted plant digging through debris, the assumption is that he actually met with someone at the facility where he obtained the code information. And yet, I say again, why no mention of the double-letters? Thus, is it even remotely possible there are some unanswered questions that need to be addressed and some missing links that require mending? I for one say yes! The craziest thing of all is, here we are trying to make sense of things and all we comprise of is a handful of soda bottle collectors who are simply trying to accurately date a couple of old Royal Crown Cola bottles. But if true-blue soda bottle collectors can't do it, then I don't know who can!

Here's the thing. He went to the factory in 1989 many years after they stopped using this code. Most likely he talked to some old timer there who informed him of the code and it's meaning; however, this old timer wasn't there in the 1930's when the double digit code was used, as apparently they stopped using this quite early in the process. It's just a matter of they simply didn't realize that the original codes where double digit. This David just took them at their word, since it did play out in the more common bottles, and assumed that the single digit letter just ran the rest of the way back. An easy assumption to make.
 

morbious_fod

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Here's another possibility to drive Soda crazy. If G1 isn't the first then is there a possibility that there is a GG for 1935 since the other codes start with a G and then include another letter? They would have had to avoid confusion with the earlier G embossed bottles.
 

squirtbob

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morbious_fod said:
SODAPOPBOB said:
I am sincere when I say there is a part of me that wants to believe the code chart is spot on, and yet there is another part of me that calls it into question. My uncertainty primarily stems from the fact that of the numerous accounts I have seen regarding the code charts that not in a single one of them do they mention anything whatsoever about the double-letter codes. And some of the accounts I'm referring to were compiled by what I would call advanced researchers. Surely those advanced researchers examined numerous Glenshaw bottles and surely they came across at least a few of the double-letter examples. And yet, even with this said, there is no mention of the double-letters. Its as if they just ignored the G's and continued as if the second letters were the only ones that counted. If you go back and read the entire page where the code chart is shown, you will see in the second paragraph where it says ...

"PSBCA [Painted Soda Bottle Collectors Association] member David Meinz cracked the odd code after visiting the Glenshaw Glass Co. in 1989."

And just so you'll know, the Glenshaw factory was still in operation in 1989 and still is under it's new name, Kelman Bottles, LLC, so its not as if David Meinz was just stumbling around an old deserted plant digging through debris, the assumption is that he actually met with someone at the facility where he obtained the code information. And yet, I say again, why no mention of the double-letters? Thus, is it even remotely possible there are some unanswered questions that need to be addressed and some missing links that require mending? I for one say yes! The craziest thing of all is, here we are trying to make sense of things and all we comprise of is a handful of soda bottle collectors who are simply trying to accurately date a couple of old Royal Crown Cola bottles. But if true-blue soda bottle collectors can't do it, then I don't know who can!

Here's the thing. He went to the factory in 1989 many years after they stopped using this code. Most likely he talked to some old timer there who informed him of the code and it's meaning; however, this old timer wasn't there in the 1930's when the double digit code was used, as apparently they stopped using this quite early in the process. It's just a matter of they simply didn't realize that the original codes where double digit. This David just took them at their word, since it did play out in the more common bottles, and assumed that the single digit letter just ran the rest of the way back. An easy assumption to make.
Morb, Nice bottles you posted and sorry dbv1919 for not crediting your nice ones as well. Prior to collecting bottles I have collected books by an author of the late 1800's. His name is G A Henty. Bibliographies began to appear in the early 50's for collectors and corrections were made in the 70's and finally around year 2000 a massive work was done with new and corrected information. I think this probably happens a great deal in different avenues of collecting and we shouldn't be surprised that that is the case with bottles. You generally stand on the shoulders of someone who has done a great deal of excellent work, everyone benefits from it but hopefully things continue to get modified and improvements are made. Perhaps out of this the Glenshaw chart will be somewhat modified and improved. More bottle collectors will become aware of subtle differences and the sample will become larger and the picture will become clearer. Morb, you may possibly be correct that a 1935 bottle would have a GG on the lip and perhaps we'll determine that GH, GI and GJ followed that for a few years until it eventually went to one letter. I am certain at some point that I have seen a single J for 1938 but don't doubt that a GJ exists. I'd like to see it. One minor correction that I'll post here concerns double dating of bottles in 1953. A point was made that in that year a "Y" appeared on the lip and a 53 showed on the base. If I can post these pictures you will see that that does not hold for my squirt bottle. It clearly has a "Y" on the lip and the number 45 on the base. Interestingly, the same number 45 appears on the opposite side of the lip. I've only been on this site for a couple years but I've learned a great deal. Thanks to all.
 

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squirtbob

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Sorry about the upside down picture post. If you can fix it fine if not I'm sure you can see what I'm talking about.
 

squirtbob

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Just in case my comment wasn't clear on the "Y" squirt bottle, I'm saying that "Y" does stand for 1953. The 45 on my squirt bottle has nothing to do with the date. The bold all caps font on the splash on the front and the advertising on the back that I'll post here is perfectly consistent with 1953.
 

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