Wire bail and porcelain stoppers on crown-top bottles (?)

[bottle-o-pop]

I'm a collector of crown-top deco bottles and I have a question about them. I sometimes see for sale a deco crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper. It just seems weird to me, so I wanted to ask - was soda sometimes sold by a bottler in a crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper, or were the wire bail stoppers only put on somehow by soda customers after they started drinking from the bottle?

 

[nhpharm]

They were often sold that way.

 

[UncleBruce]

I'm a collector of crown-top deco bottles and I have a question about them. I sometimes see for sale a deco crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper. It just seems weird to me, so I wanted to ask - was soda sometimes sold by a bottler in a crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper, or were the wire bail stoppers only put on somehow by soda customers after they started drinking from the bottle?

I have never seen a DECO bottle with a wired closure, yet I have several embossed crown top beers that have wired on closures. These beers are older than the DECO era sodas. On the sodas the crown cap would usually have indicated the flavor of the contents. In my personal opinion I would be highly suspicious that a wired closure would have been added to ENHANCE the bottle and would not be original. I have literally found thousands of deco era sodas and none ever had this type closure. I do restoration on my old closures and in working with these they are easily installed and I have many new old stock closure mechanisms that could be put on bottles. A good friend of mine in Davenport, Iowa can make the eccentrics and bails from scratch and they look perfect.
Having typed all of this... who knows, maybe, but I would doubt the authenticity.
I shared this beer in a different forum. It is a crown top with a wired closure. It is pre 1920.

 

[westKYdigger]

Can we see a picture of a Deco with a wired closure?

 

[CanadianBottles]

I agree with Uncle Bruce, it was a common practice but I've never seen one on a deco bottle. It's possible on the earliest decos from the 1910s or early 20s, after that I think the practice mostly died out. I imagine finding a wire stopper on a quart deco soda would be more likely as well, one on a standard size bottle would really raise my suspicions.

 

[greendirt330]

There are some straight side Coca Cola bottles out there that are crown top with the wired porcelain stoppers , correct me if I’m wrong but I think they are called Lightning closures maybe ? The bottom of the crown part that attached to the neck has more of a flat area that protrudes slightly around the bottom for the wire closure to seat against . My understanding was they done this so the bottler could use whichever of the two that they preferred , crown or wired porcelain stopper.

 

[bottle-o-pop]

I don't have any deco bottle with such a closure, or any closure, actually. I'd have to refer to someone's ebay item if I could find another one.

 

[hemihampton]

You can't trust anything you see on ebay. To many Fakes on ebay & to many clueless people making Fakes. I think during Prohibition some of these wire lightning stoppers made a comeback being used mainly by the illegal self/home brewers. Just my opinion. I'm sure others will vary? LEON.

 

[Sodasandbeers]

Actually, these bottles were often re-used for home bottling of Hires Root beer and unless the household had a crown capper, they would use the lightning and Hutter stoppers to seal the fermenting beverage. I have seen this bottles in old dumps and houses in our area and they were not doctored, although I have seen many doctored bottles over the years also.

 

[EvansBottles]

Sodasandbeers was the only one that got it right. Everything else is simply speculation.
The lightning stoppers were sold for that very purpose. And were sized to fit a crown top
rather than a blob top. Which require a longer top wire. Although some bottlers used them
early on when the switch to crown tops was made. There are even transitional crown tops
that have a longer lower part of the lip. This was to accommodate the blob top sized wire
bail.