The Schmidt Museum closes, and we remember a magical visit with Jan Schmidt in 2009

August 19, 2011 - If you've been following along in the pages of the Cola Conquest magazine and the Soda Spectrum magazine, you know that the Schmidt family has decided to close the museum and will be auctioning their collection off over the next few years.

In honor of this monumental event, I'm reprinting the story I wrote for Issue #5 of the Cola Conquest magazine about the Schmidt family and my trip to the Schmidt Museum of Coca-Cola Memorabilia back in 2009. Enjoy!

Coca-Cola Dreams... at the Schmidt Museum of Coca-Cola Memorabilia
By Blair Matthews

For Coca-Cola collectors, the Schmidt Museum of Coca-Cola Memorabilia is 32,000 sq. ft. filled with historical wonders. The largest private Coca-Cola collection in the world, it represents a lifetime of dedication to a company by a family who has seen ups and downs in an industry unlike any other. Building an enormous and priceless collection of memorabilia certainly wasn’t the intention when Bill and Jan Schmidt began their journey with The Coca-Cola Company more than 40 years ago. In fact, their collection started out the same way most collections do... with a single piece.

For most of the years that they were associated with The Coca-Cola Company collecting was secondary to bottling Coke at their Elizabethtown Coca-Cola plant.

The Early Days
The history of Coca-Cola and the Schmidt family goes back to 1901 when Bill Schmidt’s grandfather began bottling in Louisville, Kentucky, one of only five plants that had been granted bottling rights at that time.

As it turned out, the territory served by the Louisville plant was too large to service and it was eventually split in the 1920s, with one son going to establish a plant in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and Bill’s father Luke was sent to run a plant in Elizabethtown.
When Bill was just 13-years-old, his father passed away. While the other two sons were planning to absorb operations of the Elizabethtown Coca-Cola bottling plant, Luke’s wife Irene stepped in and took over its management instead.

In those days, says Jan Schmidt, it was unheard of for a woman to be in that position of authority. “She ran that plant all through World War II which was quite a feat because of Fort Knox. There was a mandate that any soldier (at Fort Knox) was to be supplied with Coca-Cola. So she had to bottle night and day to supply the troops of Fort Knox.”

And in a time when sugar and supplies were being rationed Irene was being granted extra sugar and syrup to keep up with demand.

While Irene kept things going with the Elizabethtown plant, Bill was growing up; he finished high school, went on to attend MIT and learned to fly. That skill landed him in the Airforce as a pilot in the Korean War for nearly 5 years.

It was during a 13-couple blind date in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in November 1953 that Bill and Jan first met. They were married 4 months later. At the end of his term in the Airforce, Bill and his new bride returned to Elizabethtown along with their young son.
Admittedly, Jan says, as a big city girl (she had previously lived in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles) moving to the small town of Elizabethtown was a shock.

She recalls one of her first days in Elizabethtown when she pushed the baby buggy down to the local market and asked for artichokes; no one knew what she was talking about. Then, at the drugstore she asked for The New Yorker magazine and was met with a look of confusion.

She wheeled the buggy back home as fast as she could. Bill, who would come home for lunch since their house was right across the street from the plant, was greeted by his wife in tears. “I said, ‘nobody’s going to like me and it’s such a small town if they don’t like me there’s nowhere to go’.”

Eventually she learned that even though she was in a small town where everyone knew her, she realized it was a very friendly place to live, work, and raise their children; and people genuinely cared.

Building a brand
When Bill took over as president at the Elizabethtown plant there were 35 employees, the machinery was worn out, wages were extremely low and moral even lower. There was much work for Bill to do at the time. The first thing he did was expand the plant.

“He told me when we married, ‘you know Jan, my father left me a Coca-Cola plant and it’s doing well. I could play a lot of golf, but I feel I owe it to my father to make more of what he left me just as my father did with the plant his father left him’.”
Bill added onto the plant, he hired more people, he raised wages, and just when things were going well, he did something that made their situation even better.

He decided he wanted to add a canning line.

For a plant the size of the one in Elizabethtown, implementing a canning line in those days was virtually unheard of. The expense alone could be crippling if it didn’t succeed. At that time, there were only three independent Coca-Cola bottling plants in the U.S. with can lines - Los Angeles, New York, and Norfolk.

“Bill called American Can Company and he said, ‘my name is Bill Schmidt, I live in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and I want to put in a can line.’ The man on the other end of the phone said, ‘absolutely Mr. Schmidt we will send some people down to talk to you next week,” Jan says.

When he hung up, everyone in the office at American Can Company ran and got an Atlas since they’d never heard of Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

When they saw where it was and the size of the town they figured he was out of his mind.

Nevertheless, they came down to Elizabethtown and met with the Schmidts. True to his word, Bill pursued it and had it installed. “Some of it - the conveyor - was second hand... we really did it on the cheap, as cheap as you can, but can lines are very expensive. We went very heavily into debt to build the business,” she says.

“The night that the can line became operational - it was maybe 1:00 am when they were going to roll off that first can. I remember looking around and here were all our drivers and they’d all come in because they wanted to load their trucks the minute those cans came off... they were so excited.”

Because the Elizabethtown Coca-Cola bottling company was only the fourth plant to put Coke in cans, they were servicing a huge area including Texas, Michigan, and many points in between.

They quickly outgrew their little red brick plant and Bill, who might have become an architect had he not gone into the family business, designed the new plant himself. He hired an engineer to make sure that his plans were feasible.

By the time the new plant was complete Jan was working with Bill in the office. When their boys were in school full time she worked alongside her husband doing public relations and eventually worked her way up to become vice-president.

Being the business-savy entrepreneurs that they were, Bill and Jan saw the wisdom of branching out into the trucking business. Afterall, they were trucking Coca-Cola to towns and cities in a number of U.S. states. It didn’t make sense from a financial standpoint to have those trucks coming back empty. So Cardinal Carriers was born.

And when various factories in the Elizabethtown territory were looking for a vending company to bring food into their lunch rooms, the Schmidts started up Vendomat vending company. The logic was that if another vending company was hired there was a possibility that they might bring Pepsi on board as the brand they offered rather than Coca-Cola. Having a vending company allowed the Coke in Elizabethtown to keep flowing in key areas.

Getting bitten by the collecting bug
The first incarnation of the Schmidt Coca-Cola Museum was a shelf in Bill’s office at the bottling plant. They’d been to visit a collegue who had a few older Coca-Cola pieces on display and it seemed like a novel idea.

Bill and Jan decided to fly to Indianna for the first-ever antique advertising show, thinking they might find a few things to fill their modest shelf. When they got there they were amazed at the number of items that Coca-Cola had put their name on.

“The collecting bug bit,” Jan says. “It’s a disease. When it bites you, there’s no hope for you. The next day we got into our station wagon and drove back to Indianapolis and bought everything we could afford. That was the beginning of our collection.”

In 1977 a call from a collector in Georgia asking if he and his group of a dozen or so Coca-Cola collectors could come up and see the Schmidt’s collection prompted Bill to build a room above the packaging area in the plant to display their items.
Bill, like most other Coca-Cola bottlers at that time, had always encouraged people to be able to come into the plant to see how the product was made. At the Elizabethtown plant, visitors could walk along a balcony and watch the bottling line in action and then continue on into the museum room.

When the time came for the visit from the Georgia collectors the group of a dozen had grown to nearly 100 instead.

In the meantime, the single room was overflowing to the point that it took up two rooms and some items had to be stored.

Bill and Jan started going to auctions to add to their collection and then as people started to become more aware that they were serious collectors, people started calling them with pieces they were selling. “If there was a significant auction going on somewhere in the country we would go to it. The thing is, as we collected, at first we collected things that were pretty or attractive to look at. But then we discovered that these artifacts were telling us the history of this country while Coca-Cola was evolving. Then we began looking for things that would fill in the historical gaps,” Jan says.

Pieces from the Depression era, things from World War I & II were artifacts that were of particular interest as Coca-Cola was becoming more popular.

As they attended auctions around the country they began to get a reputation that they’d bid as high as it took to get a particular item. Jan says many times, that just wasn’t the case. “We knew what we thought it was worth to us to buy and if it went beyond that we didn’t buy it. People would be bidding against us and they thought we would just keep going until we bought it, and we would not have. If we would have gone to a certain point where we felt it wasn’t worth it, we would have quit. But people didn’t seem to know that so they would drop out. That was unfortunate because we felt a little badly.”

The One That Got Away
Visitors might tour through the Schmidt Museum now and wonder if they own one of every vintage piece that was ever made. Schmidt says that’s not so. She tells the story of the Boudoir Clock.

A woman in Virginia sent the Schmidts a photograph of some old Coca-Cola trays that she wanted to sell. In the photograph were trays that they neither wanted or needed - by that point they already had a complete set of vintage trays. “In the background of the photo was this little Coca-Cola clock, and Bill and I got our magnifying glasses out and I said, ‘my golly Bill, we’ve never seen that before’. He said, ‘We need to go to Virginia’.”

As luck would have it, they were already scheduled to attend a bottlers meeting in Washington D.C. After the meeting they rented a car and drove down to Virginia to see the mysterious clock. “The first thing we saw when we pulled up in front of this little bitty house - and there’s nothing wrong with little bitty if it’s neat and clean - but the first thing we saw was a collection of, as we say in the south, commodes, on the front lawn. And the house went downhill from there,” Jan remembers. The woman had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 cats roaming around inside the house.

“She had laid out these Coca-Cola trays, and of course we knew we didn’t want those trays. Back on a table was this absolutely incredible clock with a girl in a blue dress, and we knew immediately it was from the 1800s and we were just blown away,” she says. They very casually looked at the trays and then Jan brought up the Coca-Cola clock in the corner. The woman nonchalantly picked it up and plunked it down for them to see, as both Jan and Bill cringed at how she was handling it.
Bill told the woman that he thought the clock was kind of interesting and that it would fill a spot in their collection, an understatement of the year, Jan says. The woman thought for a moment, then asked them what they’d give her for it.
“Bill named a very fair price - my husband was the most straight-arrow man in the world - her eyes just lit up because she had no idea. But he was not the kind of man who would say ‘I’ll give you $50 for it’ - he was not the kind of man that could do that.”
Then the woman realized she might just be sitting on a gold mine.

Jan says the woman got this cunning look on her face and suggested that she put it up for bids - and asked Bill what his next offer would be. He asked her for a piece of paper and a pencil; he wrote down a price on the paper, folded it up, and handed it back to the woman. “He wrote down the exact same price,” Jan says. “Of course, we didn’t get the clock.”

Years later, the Schmidts bought a significant Coca-Cola collection from a man who lived in Washington State. In that collection was an almost identical clock... everything was the same except the woman’s dress was a different color. “I know it’s out there somewhere. Someone may have it and not even know what they have.”

Jan says that although they didn’t get the clock they had gone to see in Virginia, they never regretted walking away from a potential gem for their collection. “That’s just the way Bill was. He offered her a fair price, she owned it, if she didn’t want to sell it for that then so be it.”

But when you lose some pieces, you gain others unexpectedly.

The Schmidts received a letter from someone in Quincy, Illinois, who had a 1914 tin Betty Girl. They sent a photograph of the ‘Betty’ that was in really good shape, along with their asking price. “They were so far off, it was just a pitiful little amount, it just wasn’t right. Bill wrote back and he said, ‘I would like to buy it, but quite frankly I could not send you that amount of money because it’s worth much more than that.’ So he wrote a check for a very fair amount for that tin Betty. We didn’t hear from them again, and then this crate arrived. In it was the tin Betty and a cardboard sign that they also had and they said, ‘You’ve been so honest with us we want to give you this’.”

As it turned out, the cardboard sign was worth much more than the Betty.

Embroiled in a battle
In the early 1980s, The Coca-Cola Company decided they didn’t like the fact that their bottlers were so independent, Jan says. The company tried several times over the years to take over the bottlers and the bottlers, being very independent, had worked hard to build their business and were proudly entrenched in their communities.

“All of a sudden they switched from a sugar-based syrup to a high fructose corn syrup,” Jan says. “That cost way less than the sugar syrup but they raised the price of the syrup to the bottlers because they were trying to weed them out. That wasn’t fair, that wasn’t right. According to the contract, you paid on a sliding scale for your syrup - as sugar prices went up you paid more for your syrup and the bottlers were very willing to do that. But to pay more for a syrup that was never going to slide up and also was so much less to produce, it was shocking to the bottlers. It was the way the company was going to try to squeeze out the smaller bottlers.”

Bill was on the Board of Governors of the Coca-Cola Bottlers Association for nearly 40 years and was well-respected among his bottling peers. A fellow bottler wrote to Bill asking for his opinion on what the company was trying to do to them. Bill quickly found himself as the spokesperson of a group of bottlers that were of the same mindset, and eventually, he and several other bottlers met with the high brass, including president Don Keogh, at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta, to voice their concerns.

The meeting did not go well.

The three men pleaded with company executives to listen to the bottlers’ concerns, to understand their problems, to see what the changes were doing to them, and to find a compromise that could satisfy everyone involved.

“They just looked at us and said, ‘no’. And Bill said, ‘I really don’t want to say this, but I am authorized to say this... in that case, we may have to go to court’. That was the hardest thing for my husband to say because he grew up in the business. Coca-Cola was in his blood. To turn against the company was something that was so hard for him,” Jan says.

A class action suit was filed and 70 other Coca-Cola bottlers joined the crusade. But along the way, The Coca-Cola Company started buying out some of those bottlers in the lawsuit. “It was horrendous. A bottler called Bill one night, we had known him for so long, and he was crying. He said, ‘Bill, I believe in everything we’re trying to do, but I can’t afford it. They’ve offered me more money than I knew existed. I’m going to sell’. All of these bottlers were families, it was in their hearts and in their blood... and (the court battle) was terribly expensive.”

The expenses mounted quickly. Since the lawsuit was filed in Delaware, the bottlers had to have legal representation from Delaware. The Schmidts, who were now at the heart of the process, rented a dreary little apartment there so that they could be available for court dates and appearances.

At first things were seemingly going their way; the judge found in their favor at a number of points along the way.
As the litigation dragged on, The Coca-Cola Company introduced diet Coke to their portfolio. Suddenly the bottlers had another bone of contention: there was no high fructose corn syrup in diet Coke and thus it wasn’t contained in the bottlers’ contract. Coca-Cola was seemingly able to charge its bottlers whatever price it set for the syrup to produce it.

Jan says it was a perfect addition to their lawsuit because it illustrated nicely the point they were trying to prove.

Closing arguments finally came for the trial; the end - either way - was coming. As both sides awaited the verdict something strange happened. Judge Schwartz mysteriously disappeared, citing an undisclosed illness.

Four or five months later, a new judge (Judge Joseph J. Farnan, Jr.) was assigned the case. “I will never forget walking in, sitting down, and here is this new judge who says, ‘well I don’t know anything about Coca-Cola. We’re going to have to start over.’ I got up quietly, walked into the Ladies’ room and balled my eyes out.”

Judge Schwartz eventually returned to the bench, but not to oversee the Coca-Cola case.

Finally the end came, 11 years after the trial had begun, and the judge awarded the bottlers $1 in damages and he found totally in favor of The Coca-Cola Company.

The bottlers appealed the decision in appellate court but they lost.

“That took a great deal out of Bill because he had to be constantly standing up and fighting against people he had known since he was a child. He didn’t want to do anything that would make The Coca-Cola Company look bad even though they were being bad. His loyalty was such to the brand itself.”

When Bill and Jan were first married, there were over 1,250 independent bottlers in the United States. Today there are slightly more than 100 left.

Despite years of fighting against the company that they helped build, both Bill and Jan still adored the brand itself. “It was two separate things for sure,” Jan says. “We were never bitter. I felt that Bill and I had spent 11 years fighting a battle that was David and Goliath. We knew that there was a huge chance that we wouldn’t be able to succeed against the company, but it was the right thing to do. Here in the South they have a saying about the Civil War and that is ‘The South stood up when it should have shut up’. And people have told us that, but I don’t believe that, Bill didn’t believe that, and the bottlers who hung in there with us didn’t believe that either - and I’m real proud of all of it. My only regret is that we drew a line, and then had to fight across that line.”

Ultimately, the Schmidt family sold the Elizabethtown Coca-Cola bottling franchise in 1999, citing outrageous demands from the company on the bottler. They did, however, include a provision in the sale stating no employee from the Elizabethtown bottling plant would lose their job.

Selling the Coca-Cola franchise was a heart-breaking decision for the Schmidts.

“Being a Coca-Cola bottler had a very special something about it that was not like being four generations of selling automobiles or something like that. There was just something about it because it was so engrained in the community; scoreboards, the logo was everywhere. Now the schools make you pay to put in a Coke machine. Before they would beg you for a Coke machine because they make huge profits from it. And then all the food police people coming along going to tax soft drinks... nobody ever said that Coca-Cola was a food, nobody ever said it did anything for you except give you a moment of pleasure. That’s the way it was marketed and that’s the way it is. During the Depression it cost 5 cents; it was one small pleasure you could afford to buy for yourself. It was a luxury. It wasn’t shoes, it wasn’t food, it was a little 5 cent luxury at the end of the week you could find a nickel and buy a Coke. It was something that was not a neccesity and that made you feel like a real person again.”

The Schmidt family kept the bottling plant itself, at first bottling private label sodas. Soon after, they sold the plant to the Cott Corporation, a private-label giant in the soft drink market. Time passed, and Cott, Jan says, ran their operations and the bottling plant into the ground. It was a shell of what Bill had once designed it to be.

“We had a big Koi pond in the lobby (of the bottling plant) and Cott people called us one day and they said, ‘do you want to buy your fish?’ The fish were a symbol to us because when Bill was building the plant, the whole thing in our minds was when we put the koi in the pond we know that plant will be finished,” Jan says.

The koi eventually found a home at the Nashville Zoo.

The museum closes - temporarily
Not long before the sale of the Elizabethtown franchise, the rules for allowing the public into a bottling facility were changed by the State for health and safety reasons, which spelled the end of tours through the Schmidt’s museum display in their plant.
This did not sit well with Coca-Cola collectors who were eager to visit the Schmidt’s still-growing collection, so two years later, a deal was struck with the Elizabethtown Tourism Bureau to have a small portion of their artifacts on display there as a temporary setup. It wasn’t long before Bill and Jan decided that they’d build a separate building dedicated solely to house their collection, but it was an ambitious project that took 5 years to realize.

Around that same time Bill’s health began to fail as the project was beginning to take shape. Fortunately, he was able to see the finished museum before he passed away in 2007.

Currently the museum has about one-third of their total collection available for viewing. The rest is stored, some of it too fragile even to see the constant light of day.

These days the sheer mass of artifacts they’ve acquired over the years still surprises Jan. “When we were building this building and then when we began putting the artifacts out Bill and I would come in late at night when there wasn’t anybody here and we’d walk along and he’d look at me and he’d put his arm around me and say, ‘what in the world were we thinking about?’ If we’d had any idea of the scope of this, I’m sure we would have said, ‘we don’t the time or the money to do that, let’s just take care of the shelves.’ Of course we never regretted doing it. Ever.”

The most interesting and valuable pieces found a place among the many displays throughout the museum.
One piece that always grabs the attention of collectors is the mechanical Coca-Cola clown from Texas. “He’s from the 30s. When we bought him we had to have him shipped home by air. He was going to come in a cargo plane but they discovered when they got him to the airport, crated up, that he wouldn’t fit (through the cargo doors). They had to uncrate him, wrap him up in bubble wrap and put him in sideways. He had a hard time getting here but he’s here, and so is his dog.”

Picking a favorite
Of all the Coca-Cola artifacts that they’ve collected over the years, Jan says, if she had to pick a favorite, it would be the festoons.

Festoons, for those unfamiliar, were cardboard signs that were made to hang on the tops of back bars of soda fountains.

Jan points to a festoon listed in Petretti’s Coca-Cola Collectibles Price Guide (12th Edition) that hangs in the Schmidt Museum. “When we drove back up to Indianapolis that second day we bought three of these for $25 each. We gave one to our cousin (the bottler in Shelbyville) and we kept two,” she says. Petretti currently lists the value for that festoon in question at over $8,000.

“Almost always when the phone calls would come in about items that people wanted to sell, they would be put through to my desk. A man called and he had this particular festoon; from the minute he described it I knew how rare it must be. I knew The Coca-Cola Company had one, but we certainly had not and I had never seen one other than in Atlanta. Always, if something came to me by telephone that I thought we would like to have I would say, ‘well let me call you back’, and then I would talk to Bill about it. But this was so rare, I thought if I don’t say ‘yes’ right now, then we’ll lose it - I just knew it. So I told him ‘yes’.

“I went into Bill’s office and I said, ‘for the first time I bought something significant and I haven’t even asked you what you think.’ He sort of leaned back and then he got this smile - because he knew it was a done deal - I described it to him and he said, ‘YES, that’s good, that’s really good!’”

And when the Schmidts added pieces to their collection they always went to auctions together and travelled together; rarely did they go off in search of pieces separately. “We always did everything together, and it worked. We had a very close marriage, he was very special and he thought I was very special; we were very lucky to have each other.”

Admittedly, Jan says since Bill’s passing two years ago, her life has changed dramatically. “I found it difficult to come out here for a long time because everything I see, I remember when we bought it. I remember a story behind it, and of course sometimes we went on wild goose chases. A man called us one time and described a calendar to us and oh my gosh, it’s really old and it’s really rare... Bill asked him questions about it that would make sure that it was what he said it was. We decided to go and take a look at it and if it was what we thought it was we would buy it. We drove about 300 miles and it was a calendar that we ourselves had put out as a reproduction calendar - it said ‘reproduction’ on it, but he was so sure it was old. So you know, it didn’t always work out.”

“We’re very proud of what we have and we’re very proud of our collection - it’s the finest and largest privately owned collection in the world,” she says. “We have quite a few things that (The Coca-Cola Company) doesn’t even have in their collection.”

As for the museum adding more vintage pieces to their collection, Jan says they’re not actively looking. “Nothing really really rare has come our way. I think to add more at this point would be a little bit greedy,” she says with a smile.

Perhaps there is a cure for ‘the sickness’ afterall.

Then again, when she agrees that you don’t generally hear about old Coca-Cola pieces being unearthed in attics or basements anymore, she says, with a touch of hope in her voice, “But you never know.”

Coca-Cola Convention 2010

If you've never been to a National Coca-Cola Collectors Club Convention, you need to see it to believe it. In the past I've tried to explain 'room-hopping' to non-collectors and they look at me like I'm crazy.

Room-hopping is a unique bit of Coca-Cola collecting to experience. Here's how it works: you set up your Coca-Cola 'stuff' to sell in your hotel room. You prop the door open and hang out something to alert other collectors that your room is open. People casually walk in and out of open rooms, buy (hopefully) and chat with each other. I've met some of the nicest people while room-hopping.

Right now, I'm sitting here typing this blog entry from a hotel room in Milwaukee, WI, site of the 2010 Coca-Cola Collectors Club Convention. Today's activities were fast and furious all over the place. We had seminars this afternoon, and the silent auction for a couple of hours brought people out of the woodwork. Earlier I dropped in to listen to a 'first time attendees' seminar hosted by longtime collectors Ron Antonio and Elizabeth Wright.

Even though this is my third National Convention, I thought it might be a good idea to see things through the eyes of a first-timer, since I, too, was once in that same position. Ironically, this was my first 'first-timer' seminar - and I still learned lots.

This week I haven't bought too much... yet. But there's still another full day to find some new treasures. Something neat that I picked up was a test-market re-sealable Coca-Cola can ($5). Another cool little piece of Coca-Cola history to add to my Coke bathroom.

Lots more to pass along to you, but for now, it's off to bed. Thursday is my last full day here in Milwaukee and it promises to be busy with Ron's "What's It Worth" seminar where he pulls items from the upcoming Friday Live Auction and the crowd has the chance to guess what each item will go for at auction. Thursday night is Chapter Night, with various regional chapters gathering for their own little get-together.

I'll post again soon, and remember - if you couldn't make it to this year's National Convention, next year it's back in Atlanta. Make your plans now, you won't regret it!

Coca-Cola thoughts, post-Vancouver Olympics

In some ways, it seems like the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games was all just a dream... a 2-week dream that went by much too fast for this Olympic aficionado. Between watching constant television coverage on CTV here in Canada, and tracking down Olympic Coca-Cola cans, bottles, flags and pins, it's all a blur. There were some great moments at these Games by athletes around the world. It never ceases to amaze me the level at which these Olympians compete. They dedicate their lives to the short time it takes to win or lose.

Coca-Cola came through once again and raised the bar for collectors. We were treated to several different common Olympic aluminum bottles, cans, a number of Coke pins, and even some exclusive venue-only Coca-Cola aluminum bottles. I was fortunate enough to have one of the special edition bottles given to me by friends of my parents who were spectators in Vancouver. And let me tell you - these bottles were not easy to get. Available only at the Coca-Cola Olympic pavilion, the bottle was given to you when you entered (cap removed) to drink. If you turned the empty bottle back in to their special recycling program they'd hand you a special light-up Coke bottle. Very cool stuff.

With all the eBay selling, pin trading, and general craziness of these Olympic Games, I got so wrapped up in selling things, I kept almost nothing for myself. So I ended up buying one of the iCoke Vancouver 2010 baseball caps on eBay that I had sold two of a month earlier. And when I discovered I had sold a set of 3 Olympic pins that had been offered by Petro Canada stores here in Ontario, I went back in this week and was disappointed to find the Olympic display of the drinking glasses was gone. At Petro Canada gas convenience stores, they had four different Olympic glasses (not Coca-Cola) - and the deal was if you bought a glass for $3.99 and two 591mL bottles of any Coke product, you'd get ONE special edition Olympic Coca-Cola pin.

At one time, I had 2 sets of three that I quickly sold.

So the day after the closing ceremonies, I went into my local Petro Canada store, hoping to grab a set of 3 pins before they were gone; I was too late - all the glasses had been sold and the pins were gone. When I asked the manager if he had any pins left, he shook his head. He must have sensed my disappointment though, when he asked me, "Would you take a loose one or does it have to be in the package?"

I wasn't sure what he was getting at.

"No no... a loose one would be fine," I answered. And with that he unclipped the Coca-Cola Olympic pin from the lapel of his shirt and handed it to me, no purchase required, no strings attached.

It's great when businesses go over and above the call of duty and provide extra customer service. That particular manager didn't know me, I had never stopped in at that Petro Canada location before, and yet the manager went that little extra step where he wasn't required. I didn't think that mentality even existed much anymore.

Lots of fabulous Coca-Cola collecting info coming up in our next Cola Conquest print edition. If you're not a subscriber, you really SHOULD be! Visit our website for more details. Thanks for reading, and happy collecting!

Coca-Cola Continues Olympic Tradition in Vancouver

For the past 7 years, Vancouver has been in the back of the minds of Canadian Coca-Cola collectors. Would there be commemorative Coca-Cola packaging for the 2010 Winter Olympics? In the past, Canada has always been lagging far behind other countries when it comes to Coca-Cola collectibles.

But sometimes less is more.

It's been obviously since this past Fall that Coca-Cola would be every bit as dedicated to promoting its Olympic branding as it has been at past Olympic Games, and collectors, such as myself, are thrilled.

In the current edition of The Cola Conquest magazine, Phil Mooney talks about how Coca-Cola pin trading and pin collecting has become a major Olympic activity for collectors. For Vancouver, there have been dozens of unique Coca-Cola pins that have been snatched up by collectors - some early Olympic 2010 Coke pins have been circulating for nearly a year already.

The pin offers that immediately come to my mind are the Canadian pins that feature Coca-Cola in a unique Canadian expression of patriotism - showing the maple leaf and Olympic logo. Movie theatres SilverCity and Cineplex offered an Olympic combo at their concession stands that included a large popcorn, large fountain drink, candy, and a special Coca-Cola Olympic pin for $13.00. Right now, in the heart of the Olympic Games, I spotted this pin on eBay going for around $10-$15.

By far the most popular pins are the daily Coca-Cola pins - a different Coke pin for each day of the Olympic Games. In today's mail I got my first ever Coca-Cola Olympic 'Day' pin - I opted to buy Day 1 that features the Olympic logo, the Coca-Cola polar bear carrying the Olympic Torch, and of course, the Coke logo. It's a fabulous little pin that quickly sold out from the official Vancouver 2010 Olympic website, where many Coca-Cola Olympic collectibles have been made available for sale.

With technology the way that it is now in 2010, it's easy to get the Olympic Coca-Cola merchandise that you want if you get it when it first goes on sale - and it's easy to take the technology for granted. In 1996 when Atlanta hosted the Olympics in Coca-Cola's own backyard, imagine what the collecting landscape might have been like if Coke collectibles could have been acquired as easily as pins are for Vancouver 2010. In '96 eBay was just finding its footing and the Internet in general wasn't nearly commonplace like it is today.

Older collectors these days will likely soon be telling stories about how hard it was to get a single Olympic pin.... "you had to attend the Games live and line up for hours and hours just to get your hands on a Coke pin," they'll say. Whereas now, with the click of a mouse, you can order something from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics that will show up at your door before the Games are even over.

But that's not to say that EVERYTHING Coca-Cola is easily attainable. Showing up just this week are two limited release aluminum Coca-Cola bottles from the Olympic Pavillion in Vancouver. For these two bottles, you really DO have to be there to get them, at least for a reasonable price. Sure, you can click over to eBay and get one for your collection, but it'll cost you $50 or more. The die-hard Olympic Coke fans won't bat an eye shelling out that kind of cash... but you never know - I might find a way to get one yet, without having to finance the purchase.

So what will these Coca-Cola collectibles be worth down the road? It's hard to say, but something tells me that once Canada's first Olympics in 22 years is in the history books and the pins, bottles, cans, coins and signs have disappeared from retailers, the rare items will still fetch a nice little price; the common things like cans and common bottles will retain a modest value.

I'll be back again with another blog on the day of the Closing Ceremonies, so be sure to pop back for a visit. Over in the pages of the Cola Conquest print edition, in Issue #7, I'll have a full recap of Olympic memorabilia, more photos, and much MUCH more for Coca-Cola collectors. I hope you'll subscribe to our print edition today!

Toronto Bottle Show 2008

I'm just back from the 2008 Toronto Bottle Show & Sale held each year at the Humber College Campus in Etobicoke, Ontario. I've been going to this yearly sale for at least the last 6 years or so (more if you count the locations where they used to hold it before Humber College). It's gone through some growing pains - sometimes a particular year will be better than ones in the past. I would say that this year the show was average with a few nice pieces here and there - nothing spectacular but definitely worth the two hour drive for me. Lots and lots of photos and stories from the Toronto Bottle Show coming up in Issue #47 of our Soda Spectrum Series print edition, so make sure you get your copy when it comes out in June.

I'm sure you're all dying to know what the editor of a magazine dedicated to soda pop collecting buys for his personal collection at a sale like this. Well, it's not an ultra rare Coca-Cola piece for thousands; it's not a hundred dollar mint Canadian off-brand bottle, no. Today I picked up an old beat up Canadian 'Canada Dry' can - with rust, holes in the side of it, left for dead in someone's garage or attic... for $1.

A dollar.

Why would I do such a thing? Well it's simple. This can was initially produced to celebrate the opening of Thunder Run at Canada's Wonderland. Actually, it was released as a way to bring people to the sneak preview at Wonderland between June 1-14, 1986. To receive the $6 off your Wonderland admission ticket you had to bring the empty can to the front gate.

This can interests me a great deal because Coca-Cola used this same coupon method with a yearly promotion in the 1990s. If memory serves, they did it for at least two years. But never before have I seen a Canada Dry can with an earlier promotion. It fascinates me to find something like this, especially since the ride is nearly 22 years old, which obviously makes the can that old too. As I mentioned, the can is not in great shape - so if I ever find the same can in better shape, I'll likely replace it on my shelf here in the office. Until then, this beat up old can will sit on display and I'll be just as proud to show it off as my other more 'collectible' pieces.

It's a piece of Canadian history - for a Toronto theme park that has changed ownership numerous times over the past 25 years. For me, I love collectibles that have a story attached to them - how I got them, where I found them, and what they mean to me. Some of my favorites pieces are ones that cost $1 but have a $100 story to tell.

A 'Not Quite Spring' Roadtrip

Though it's officially Spring here in Ontario, it sure doesn't feel like it. So when I woke up this morning to a bright sunny day - no blowing snow, freezing rain, or ice pellets - I knew a roadtrip to my favorite soda store in Whitby (2 hours away from me) was in order. I've written about Soda Pop Central in the past, but I always find new and unique soda pops there every time I visit.

Owner Dave Repol has done wonders for raising awareness of the goodness of sodas in glass bottles. At his shop, you'll find hundreds of sodas from around the world... and nearly all of it is in glass bottles.

Among the rows of sodas for sale is Dave's vast collection of Vernors memorabilia on display, mostly vintage pieces he's accrued on eBay and from other collectors. The walls are covered with Vernors vintage advertising and Hires ads as well. It makes for a really nostalgic visit for collectors and an important introduction for young soda drinkers. The beverage industry is long and storied, and Soda Pop Central is a fabulous place to learn that there's more to it than the newest offerings from Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

My favorites are Sparky's rootbeer, Dr Pepper directly from Texas (with the pure cane sugar), and Coca-Cola Light (diet Coke) from Mexico... all in glass bottles, of course. I always pick up a few bottles of my favorite sodas when I'm there, but I also make a point to pick up the new sodas that Dave brings in that I haven't tried before.

New this time around was: 'Looks Like Orange Tastes Like Grape' (obviously a soda that appears orange but actually tastes like grape - what a weird concept); Ramune Melon Flavored soda, imported from Japan (and has a marble that rolls around inside the neck of the bottle); Frostop premium root beer and Frostop Vanilla Caramel were new additions, and extremely tasty.

Also new to the line-up at Soda Pop Central is an entire line of Crush sodas in glass. I've seen grape, strawberry and peach before, but this was a first for me to find Pineapple, and Tropical Fruit Punch in longneck glass bottles. And so my soda discoveries continue.

I left Soda Pop Central today with a case of 24 mixed bottles and one extra bottle of Sparky's right out of their cooler for the road. Unfortunately, I drank the whole bottle before I made it out of the parking lot. Oh well, such is life.

Visit Soda Pop Central at: http://www.sodapopcentral.com (1001 Burns Street East #4, Whitby, Ontario) or contact Dave at 1-800-977-3765.

Everything Old is New Again

Right now I'm sipping a bottle of Fanta red tangerine, just new to the Canadian market earlier in August. Fanta hasn't been seen around these parts since the 1980s when Fanta orange was a staple in the Canadian Coca-Cola portfolio. Twenty years later Fanta has re-surfaced in Canada with flavors: Grape, Red Tangerine, Cream Soda and Wildberry. It's ironic that the orange is no where to be seen since it was the flavor that first brought the brand to its popularity here two decades ago.

Fanta was originally conceived in Germany in 1940 and was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 1960. Now, nearly 50 years later, Coca-Cola has upwards of 70 different flavors of Fanta in 180 countries. Many Fanta flavors are only available in very specific overseas areas with varieties such as Fanta Shokata, Fanta Funky Orange, Lactic White Grape, Beetroot and Red Emotion.

It's hard to say if Fanta will find success here in the Canadian market - the beverage landscape in 2007 is much different than it was 20 years ago. There are so many variations and spin-off products, especially by Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Earlier this summer, Pepsi found some success with its new Lipton Brisk Green tea with Apple soda. And while Coca-Cola packaging for 'Black Cherry Vanilla Coke' still screams "NEW" across it, it's obvious that BCV (which hasn't been new for nearly a year) just isn't catching on. 7Up's Lemon Squeeze started out strong in May and June, but by July was discontinued and has all but disappeared from store shelves here in Ontario.

And so the revolving door sodas continue.

Will Fanta be the latest coming and going? Coke would have you believe it's yet another extension of Fanta's worldwide success, but I'm skeptical that it'll be around a year from now.

Summer Offerings and a Bad Omen?

It's been an interesting summer around these parts. Coca-Cola in Canada brought the 'Coke Side of Life' out in full force with lots of Canadian advertising and a very cool commemorative can. The can is absolutely everywhere and in all types of packaging. It's most definitely the coolest commemorative can that we've seen here in years.

Pepsi, on the otherhand, has also made some waves in the commemorative can world. Their Canadian cans have some cool symbols on them, similar to that of the US cans with different areas of life and technology promoted. I still have to dig up some info on whether or not the Canadian cans will have a number of different designs on them or if the CDN version will have a more limited release. More on that to come shortly.

The other day when I was in the grocery store, I was carrying around a 12 pack of diet Coke cans by the indented handle on the top of case. Suddenly, the end split open and all 12 cans spilled out onto the floor, rolling in every direction. It was slightly embarassing as a couple of grocery store employees hurried over to help me collect the cans and return them to the box, which I was still holding in my hand by the handle. It was one of those slow motion moments where every person in the store was looking squarely at me. Thankfully, none of the cans blew up or leaked - but most of them ended up dented. Hopefully that experience wasn't an omen of things to come... I love my diet Coke dearly and would never want to be told I couldn't have it. :)

I'll be popping in here periodically to write some brief ramblings and very shortly will give you an update on what's coming up in our Fall 2007 edition of The Soda Spectrum Series, due out in October.

The Merging of the Minds - SPD name gone, Soda Spectrum Series replaces it...

It's been a long time since I last put fingers to keyboard and pounded out a blog entry here on the magazine's website.

If you're just dropping by after an absence, you'll notice something has changed... we've dropped the 'Soda Pop Dreams' name in favor of the Soda Spectrum Series. Basically, they've merged and become a bigger and better magazine.

The reasons are simple: having separate Soda Spectrum magazines for Coca-Cola collectors, Pepsi collectors, and Coke bottle collectors really gave Soda Pop Dreams Magazine a beating in the subscription numbers. Plus, creating 3 'everything Pepsi', 3 'everything Coca-Cola' and 3 Coke bottle Soda Spectrum editions in a year was brutal on my schedule.

And since I do enjoy sleep from time to time, I made the decision with a heavy heart to merge all of them together, make a much bigger edition each time, and hopefully satisfy everyone's individual collecting niche.

What this means to you: if you were buying individual copies of the Soda Spectrum Series before (either of our 3 various editions for Pepsi collectors, everything Coca-Cola or Coke bottle collectors), you'll still find loads of information in EVERY SINGLE EDITION of the new Soda Spectrum Series.

There are sections in EVERY edition of the new magazine for those three collecting groups as well as a huge section for 'off-brand' and 'old brand' collectors.

If you were a subscriber of Soda Pop Dreams Magazine, nothing will change for you - you'll still receive your copy of the magazine, but instead of having the old Soda Pop Dreams name, it's called The Soda Spectrum Series.

Soda Pop Dreams name out... Soda Spectrum Series name IN.

I hope I've explained the magazine to your satisfaction. If you have any questions or concerns about your subscription or the magazine in general, by all means, please drop me a line - that's what I'm here for.

Thanks so much for your time, and happy collecting!

It's a Green Christmas With Big Red...

Last year at this time, I was critical of The Coca-Cola Company for their holiday packaging and I praised Pepsi for their Christmas efforts; this year, it's the exact opposite. To celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Sundblom Santa Claus advertising images, Coca-Cola brought out some wonderfully festive Santa and Christmas packaging - point-of-sale material, ornaments, trays, 2L bottles and cans, and even a commemorative 8 oz. wrapped bottle with the Coke Santa image. It was a welcome change from the Coca-Cola polar bears and seals of the 2005 campaign.

I had a great opportunity this year to write about the Coca-Cola Christmas 2006 campaign in the pages of the Christmas edition of the Soda Spectrum Series, but a few things came out after the magazine was being printed and thus I couldn't include them. The first is a great little deal I found at Zeller's department stores here in Ontario. For one week only, when you bought any Coca-Cola licensed item (tray, plate, or various tin trinkets) you would get a FREE 75th Anniversary Coca-Cola Christmas ornament. Now granted, the ornament (shaped like a bottle cap) was only priced at a few dollars - but it was a nice tip of the hat to the 75th Sundblom Santa and gave some much-needed publicity to the special anniversary. I picked up a great 75th Sundblom metal tray and then the free ornament. I'm sure that neither will be worth anything in the future, but since the tray only cost $9.99, it's hardly an investment that is deserving of a monetary return.

The other Coca-Cola tidbit that I discovered near the end of November was a promotion that Blockbuster Canada was (and still is) running. For $14.99 you could rent two new releases and get two packages of microwave popcorn, two 500mL bottles of Coca-Cola and ONE holligraphic plastic Coke cup (three different cups in the set). In the beginning, there was a different cup available each week for three weeks... now, several days before Christmas, Blockbuster is also selling the leftover cups for $1.99 each.

These cups are great - and quite strong (not like the regular flimsy commemorative plastic cups you usually see). Plus the holligraphic wrap around each cup gives is a 3-D appearance. Our Blockbuster location here in town didn't have too many left, so if you're a Coke collector, you might want to drop in to your local store sooner than later.

And finally... I'm guilty of the same mistake I wrote about a while back when I scolded people for publishing blogs but never writing in them or updating them. So, to rectify this omission, I'm back at it here as the year comes to a close. This past year has been a great year for Soda Pop Dreams Magazine and the Soda Spectrum Series - probably the greatest ever. If you're a regular reader of our print editions, this is not news to you. We published 8 editions of the Soda Spectrum Series and 4 Soda Pop Dreams! Plus, I somehow found time to jump into the world of podcasting with four podcast episodes with various guests related to soda collecting. It was a ton of fun, and 2007 is going to be even better with 9 Soda Spectrums and 4 SPD editions.

OK, that's all for now. From my family to yours, I wish you all a very happy and healthy Christmas and New Year. Take care, and Happy Collecting!

Welcome to 'The Coke Side of Life'...

Things are not all rosy and blissful these days at The Coca-Cola Company. Consumption is down, the cola market is flat, and Pepsi has been kicking Coke's butt in sales. Is it a case of Coke making errors and Pepsi doing everything right? I tend to think it's more of a cautious strategic business plan that Pepsi is using lately... but now Coke is trying to get back in the game with a new feel-good campaign called 'The Coke Side of Life'.

These days, there are so many commercials - we're bombarded with them on hundreds of channels. Is there an ad out there that will stand the test of time and be remembered for decades to come - like the Coca-Cola 'Mean Joe Green' commercial? Or what about the Michael Jackson Pepsi spots from the 1980s? Coke and Pepsi have struggled for years to come up with that next 'hit' commercial that gets people flocking to their local beverage aisle to pick up a case of their favorite brand... or better still, convert a Coke drinker to Pepsi or vice-versa. Pepsi has come much closer than Coke in recent years to creating that memorable commercial 'spot' with their Britney Spears 'Joy of Pepsi' campaign. Memorable, yes.... and Coca-Cola had... don't remember? Me either.

So now Coca-Cola is banking on 'The Coke Side of Life' to bring its billion dollar empire back into the top-of-mind-awareness of cola consumers. Initially there are 15 commercial spots hitting the airwaves. Some are brillant, and a few are just plain weird. My favorite is titled: "Fountain Pour". I'd nickname it: "Sip Stealing". You might have seen it already: a guy fills up his cup at the Coca-Cola fountain, takes a quick sip, then fills it back up again without being noticed. The other one that made me smile is titled "Ringtone". It's cute, sharp, and definitely gets the message across.

Will these new spots do what they're designed to do? Only you, as cola consumers, can answer that question.

Jones Soda Feels the Love...

Oh boy, there's love in the air these days!! It's Valentine's Day and that means overpriced flowers, stale chocolates, card stores that see dollar signs... and Love Potion soda pop??!!??

Enter Jones Soda.

I've written in the past about Jones Soda's innovative marketing approach with their Thanksgiving sodas (Turkey & Gravy flavor) and their Hot Wheels flavor pack from a while back. Now, they're spreading a little bit of love in the soda world with their Love Potion #6 Valentine Jones pack.

This limited edition comes with two bottles of Love Potion #6 Jones Soda, a flavored lip balm (which my wife has already removed from the box lol), a Jones Soda CD featuring Sony BMG artists, and Jones Soda love coupons. My favorite coupons are the "Overlord of the Remote Control", and "1 Magical Argument Ender". Both of these coupons are worth the $9.99 purchase price that Jones has tagged this special pack.

As a company, Jones Soda has seemingly put the right people in the right places... shares of Jones have been steadily increasing, brand awareness has grown, and more folks are sipping on some tasty sodas. And for good reason.

Pick up one of the Limited Edition Jones Soda Valentine's Day packs at: http://www.jonessoda.com - and run with the little guy.

Those who think young say 'Pepsi Please'!

My sister and her family live in Wiarton, Ontario (Canada) - home of Wiarton Willie. The big news of the day up there today (Groundhog Day) is that Wiarton Willie didn't see his shadow, so we're due for an early spring. Personally, I think Coca-Cola and Pepsi are missing the boat here in terms of a promotional opportunity. Can't you just picture the cartoon image of Wiarton Willie plastered across a Coke can? Or how about a commemorative 8 oz. glass Coke bottle celebrating Wiarton Willie's yearly prediction? Hey, I think we're onto something here now...

So the unthinkable has happened... there are more Pepsi products in our household right now than there are Coke. That ranks right up there with pigs flying, the end of the world, and the Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. Sorry, cheap shot for Ivan and Bob (father-in-law).

But seriously - everywhere I look right now, there are Pepsi cans. The reason is, of course, because PepsiCo. Canada has released two very prominent promotions within days of each other. First, the SuperBowl 2-can Pepsi set (1 Pepsi and 1 Diet Pepsi). These cans are similar to the US promotion, except that our cans here have both english and french and the scripting is slightly different.

The other is a much larger undertaking. Once the smoke clears from this weekend's SuperBowl, the Wayne Gretzky 'Greatest Moments' promotion kicks into high gear. Pepsi's association with Gretzky means a lot this year, at least as far as can collecting goes. There are 6 regular Pepsi cans and 6 Diet Pepsi cans on the horizon due to hit stores between now and the end of February. My office is a sea of blue with cans #1 and #2 stacked up all over the place - and I don't even drink Pepsi. I'm working on making 6 complete sets, so the blue is likely to continue, at least for a few more weeks. And hey, if you're a Pepsi collector, you'll want to check out the special edition 'everything Pepsi' Soda Spectrum Series magazine.

I'll be back here in a few days to chat about Jones Soda's Valentine's Day 2006 series, so check back soon!

A diet Coke to fall in love with...

It's been a busy January for me so far - today I'm preparing the mailing for the print edition of Soda Pop Dreams Magazine, and over the next week or two, I'll be putting the finishing touches on our first 'everything Pepsi' Soda Spectrum Series magazine (also a print publication). So far, the Pepsi mag has been a blast since it's the first time I've done a magazine dedicated solely to Pepsi collectors. Some very unique collectibles, that's for sure. Tons of fun and some excellent articles - be sure to check it out!

Erin and I just bought our first house this week and you know what that means - yep - my very own office/soda collectibles room in the basement!! That also means that the boxes of memorabilia that have been hidden in our storage unit will also be brought out too. Lots of cans, bottles, and old soda signs will happily find a new home in, um, our new home. :)

No doubt the pic at the top of this page made you say 'ewwww'. Most of you know my obsession with diet Coke (we'll refer to it as the 'DC' here)... I LOVE diet Coke, diet Coke with Lime, but despise diet Coke with Lemon (now defunct), and I'm definitely not a fan of 'DC' with Splenda. But how about mixing my two favorites - DC and............. bacon. Now THERE'S a winning flavor combination.

Take care, happy collecting, and we'll chat with you in the pages of our print editions.