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Dating Value Of Crown Caps?


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I dig a lot of ring tabs and their decapitated brethren -- beavertails, and thus my avatar.  Since those were used between 1965 and 1975 and likely dropped in that time window you get both an upper and lower bound ("someone was here drinking out of a can as recent as 1965"; ditto "...as long ago as 1975") on a site's usage.  (Like always there are exceptions, such as a site being backfilled with material from another location).

I'm wondering if a similar conclusion can be drawn from crown caps.  Of the (not nearly as many as you, Strick) bottles caps I've dug I recall one specifically still having the inner cork seal, many with the plastic seal, and a moderate number with neither.  'Neither' could mean it never had one, it had a cork one that decayed over the years (my gut feel for most likely explanation), or a plastic one that someone intentionally removed.

Does anyone know the time window of usage for cork inner seals and/or the initiation of the plastic liners?  I recall when I was either in elementary school or more likely, high school, a Coca Cola promotion where the plastic liners of crown caps had NFL emblems (teams, players, can't remember details) and that sending in a complete set would return a (American) football as your reward.  (I still have mine....)  So that would have been 1970 or earlier.  Still, there could have been multiple years when both cork and plastic were simultaneously in use.

Addendum: The football I received from that promotion had an imprinted (not ink-signed) autograph of Tom Moore (the running back, not the coach) and I justed looked him up on Wikipedia.  He retired after the 1967 season.

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I remember cork liners in bottle caps in the late 1960s, possibly into the early 70s.  There was a promotion or contest where you scratched the cork away to reveal a possible prize written underneath.  10 or 15 cents would have been a typical "good" prize.  I think it was RC cola.

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5 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

-- beavertails, and thus my avatar.

Thanks for the shot of nostalgia.  Just the other day I was detecting at the park and got my first hands on of a beaver tail since I was a little kid lacking the finger strength to rip one of those things off (SOOOO frustrating!!!!:angry:).  Usually, when I tried, I ripped off the ring leaving the beavertail in place on an unopened can. Often a bruise or small cut was the result.  This was frequently followed by an adult either laughing or yelling at me. :sad:

Who designed these damn things?!?!?!?!

As a kid they were unuseable, and now as a detectorist...  we all get a less than enjoyable feeling from them.  Oh well.  Thanks for bringing what will probably be the only joy I ever experience from this old school pull tab. :laugh:

One other bit of nostalgia from those days.  Who remembers kids and teens making chains out of these things, wrapping one around the next??  I remember the dads in our neighborhood relaxing with a 6 pack wearing a necklace the kids made out of these things.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In a classic 70's era kitsch craft, my Mom would dip the rings in some sort of colored liquid plastic to make "stained glass-esque) chains.  The dip would harden inside the can top rings just about the time we were all high as a kite from the fumes.   I can still picture the chain curtain she made hanging in our kitchen window.  haha.  good times. Tim.

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http://thebottlecapman.com/Collectors Info.htm

This site indicates that solid cork was used until about 1915. Cork composite from c1915-late 1960s. Plastic thereafter.

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