From Mike Elling : For Sale: 2003 Paducah 8oz Coca-Cola 100th Anniversary Bottles are being rationed by the distributor. I can presently offer one bottle with no seam through the logo design at $10.00 parcel postpaid or $12.50 priority postpaid in the U.S.. Mike Elling, 4042 Sidonia Road, Sharon, TN 38255; or for more information, E-mail: Chero Mike 

A Collector's Guide to Arizona Bottles & Stoneware by Michael Miller For ordering information contact : Michael Miller, 9214 W. Gary Rd., Peoria, AZ 85345 Phone: 623-486-3123 Email: helgramike@earthlink.net

From Defeo : ACLS for TRADE or SALE! I have over 1,000 ACL bottles for trade or sale. I'm am also looking for other collectors for trading. I collect mostly ACLs from the northeastern USA. I also buy single bottles or whole collections - if you are looking to unload some. E-mail me.

From Robert Curtis : Since I have so much, instead of listing them all, maybe it would be easier to just say many Coca Cola and Pepsi items for sale. Contact - Robert A. Curtis - 1860 Mass. Ave N.E., The Regency - #105 - St. Petersburg, Fl 33703; or E-mail me for a quicker response. 

From Richard Mix : I am very pleased to announce the launch of --www.bottleworld.com-- !!! Bottleworld.com is part of a bigger collectibles website currently in development. Plans are to eventually expand the bottle piece to include over 25 different types of bottles (ACLs, medicine, bitters, beer, etc.); however, it currently is focused solely on commemorative soda bottles! You can get more info on the homepage. Enhancements, photos, and new features are being added daily if not hourly!! Many of the pictures will be enhanced and reworked - hundreds more bottles will be added over next few weeks before the site is fully functional. Also, don't forget ebay--click here to see my auctions--

Be sure to send me your UP FOR GRABS item listings! E-mail to: Up For Grabs 

From Ted Oswalt : I want to buy Coca-Cola 75th Anniversary silver ingots. Email me with the city and date.

There are also WANTED items listed <here> at the bottom of the page. They are current 'ads', just listed this past week.

Do you have a particular item, or items, that you have been looking for a long time to complete part of your collection, or something you want - but have not as yet been able to find? Send it so all of us can help you look. You never know where it may turn up! E-mail it to My Missing Item

The Coca-Cola Company has kicked off the nationwide rollout of its latest product - Sprite Remix - a tropical version of the Sprite brand which has hit shelves in stores across the country this week after its initial launch at the Tropical Cafe in the town of Tavernier, Florida during what Monroe County Commissioner, Murray Nelson, declared "Tropical Sprite Remix Day" (on April 23rd). It is initially available in 20-ounce bottles, and will expand into 12-ounce cans, multi-packs and one-and two-liter bottles later this spring and summer. Coke is also coming out this year with a mint-flavored version of Sprite called Sprite Ice. 

Pepsi is going to add its own flavors to the 'cola war' with summer plans to launch of Pepsi Vanilla, Diet Pepsi Vanilla and Mountain Dew LiveWire, an orange-flavored variety of the drink. 

Coca-Cola Co. has bought a $10 million stake in the cable channel College Sports Television. Coke also plans to pay $5 million to sponsor the channel, which will air live college sports events, highlights, and original programming featuring advice from college coaches. Both Coke and College Sports declined to say the size of its stake in the cable channel that Coke bought with its $10 million investment. Under terms of the deal, Chuck Fruit, senior vice president of worldwide media and alliances at Coke, will sit on the channel's board of directors. The deal is the latest in Coke's marketing push in the sports world. Coke recently signed an 11-year, $500 million sponsorship deal with the NCAA, and it has a deal with the Nascar car racing league. Initially, the channel will be broadcast only to subscribers of DirecTV's premium sports package, but deals with other cable companies or satellite television providers should be announced soon.

Royal Crown Cola, the third-largest cola brand in the US after Coke and Pepsi, is entering India this summer. The Canada-based Cott Corp had acquired the rights for the brand — called RC Cola — outside the US, from Cadbury Schweppes a few years ago. The company is launching the brand in cola, lemon and orange flavors through a licensing, franchise bottling agreement with two companies in India. One will be based in Chandigarh overseeing the north, the other will be based in Hyderabad overseeing the south and west. A bottling plant is being set up near Chandigarh, and the products were scheduled to hit the markets on April 20, if not, latest by the first week of May.

This summer, Slush Puppie will make some lucky kids' rooms the envy of the neighborhood in its ‘Your Room, Your Rules' promotion. During June through August, Slush Puppie is offering consumers the chance to instantly win the latest TVs, computers, playstations, and DVDs with the purchase of a specially marked 16-ounce cup of Slush Puppie. Peel-off game pieces on specially marked cups will have a unique code number, which consumers can check via a visit to the Slush Puppie Web site (www.slushpuppie.com) to find out if they've won. 

New bottles or cans, or anything soda, in your area ?
Please send the info so all of us can know @ Whats New

May 2-3 (Friday-Saturday) Gray, Tennessee
State of Franklin Antique Bottle Collectors Association's 5th Annual Show & Sale
(Sat. 9AM-3PM, early admission Fri. noon-6PM)
at the Appalachian Fairgrounds, Gray, Tennessee
INFO: CHARLIE BARNETTE, 100 Coffey St., Bristol, TN 37620
PH: (423) 968-1237, E-mail: bristolbotls@chartertn.net 
Website: http://hometown.aol.com/sfabca/sfabca.html 

The Vintage Chapter of the Coca-Cola Collectors Club is hosting the Vintage Soda Pop Show at the Red Roof Inn in Columbus, Ohio, May 2-3, 2003. For more information, please contact: William Beck at (901) 458-4510. The Red Roof Inn is located at Worthington, Exit 23 off of I-270 and Rt. 23. For hotel reservation information, please call toll-free: (800) 874-9000.

May 3-4 (Saturday-Sunday) Brisbane, Australia
Caloundra 2003 National Bottle & Collectibles Fair
(Sat. 9 AM-5PM, Sun. 9AM-3PM) at the Downey Park Table Tennis Center
86 Green Terrace, Windsor, Brisbane, Australia
INFO: L. FOSTER, PH: (07) 5494 1106

May 4 (Sunday) Utica, New York
Mohawk Valley Antique Bottle Club's 9th Annual Show & Sale
(Sun. 9 AM - 2:30 PM) at the Herkimer County Fairgrounds
Route 5S & Cemetery Rd., Frankfort, New York
INFO: FRED CAPOZZELLA, 1108 Rutger St., Utica, NY 13501
PH: (315) 724-1026, E-mail: fcapozzella@hotmail.com 

The New South Wales Chapter of the Coca-Cola Collectors Club is holding their annual giant swap meet at the South Hurstville RSL, 71 Connells Point Road, South Hurstville, NSW, Australia on Sunday May 25, 2003 from 10:30am-2pm. Admission is Free. For additional information, please contact Brian Hill, at +61-407-922-291. 

Smokyfest 2003 will be held at the Holiday Inn in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee from June 5-7, 2003. Events will include welcome party, silent auction, swap meet, scavenger hunt, banquet and room hopping. For more information, please contact Jean Waddell, 686 Antioch Road, Cedartown, GA 30125. Please call toll free for hotel reservations (800) 782-3119.

June 21, 2003 - Houston, Texas (9am - 4pm)
Gulf Coast Bottle & Jar Club presents their 34th Annual Antique Bottle, Advertising and Collectibles Show and Sale - at the Marriott (formerly Radisson Hotel) 9100 Gulf Freeway, Houston, Texas 77017 (713)943-7979. Admission $2. Early admission Friday night June 20th - 7-10:30 pm - $10. per person. Wide variety of bottles, cans, fruit jars, inks, milk bottles, drug store collectibles - Coca Cola - Dr. Pepper - 7 UP - Orange Crush, Texas memorabilia, oil company items, and lots lots more! For Sales Table and Show Information, please contact Barbara Puckett, 907 W. Temple, Houston, TX 77009, (713) 862-1690 or e-mail for information - bjcoll@hotmail.com or red1@wt.net.

If you would like to view the full 'events calendar,' I now maintain an online one <here>.
Any new events  in your area? E-mail it so all of us can know, to: Upcoming Events

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend last week. As things with the FOHBC become more hectic with me, I find less and less time available for the things I did before. So, if anyone would like to volunteer to seek, or contribute, articles of interest for this e-Zine, I would be grateful. Just email me. Please!

I will be attending the show in Gray, Tennessee this year, which is sponsored by my local bottle club. I will also be at the Mansfield, Ohio show May 9-10th, with samples of Bottles & Extras, as well as other available information to the soda bottle collector - from Blair Matthew, Soda Pop Dreams. I have requested samples of the print publication of The Soda Fizz Magazine and the ACL Bottle Book, but have not heard back from the Publisher yet regarding available copies.

If you plan to attend either of these shows, please do look me up and say "Hey!"

Also, this week's newsletter is later than usual due to a problem with the email service. I apologize for that, but there was nothing I could do. Enjoy!
Until next week, Happy Collecting! CokeGirl

Michael J. Owens was born in 1859 in Mason County, West Virginia. At the age of ten, he showed up for his first day on the job at the J. H. Hobbs, Brockunier and Co. Glassworks without any shoes. He was sent home to get them, but had to stay away for several days until he was able to borrow a pair, as he had none of his own.

By the age of fifteen, he had worked his way up to the position of "gaffer," or head of the shop. He later went to work for the Libbey Glass Company in Toledo, Ohio, where he was made foreman within three months, and then factory superintendent two years later.

In 1891, Owens patented his first invention, a machine that automatically opened and closed molds. In 1899, he began work on a fully automatic glass blowing machine, and four years later, had a working model in production. This invention revolutionized the glass-blowing industry.

Frank M. Gessner, editor of the National Glass Budget, had this to say of the Owens Machine after visiting the Toledo plant in 1903:

"The Owens Machine stands in a class unapproached by other inventions. It differs radically and fundamentally from all other machines in several epoch-making features, because it gathers its glass, forms its blanks, transfers the blank from the gathering mold to a blow mold with a finished tip and ring, blows the bottle and delivers the finished bottle automatically without the touch of the human hand, eliminates all skill and labor and puts the same amount of glass into every bottle, makes every bottle the same length, finish, weight and capacity. It wastes no glass, uses no pipes, snaps, finishing tools, glory holes, rosin, charcoal and requires neither gatherer, mold boy, snap boy nor finisher and still makes better bottles, and more of them than any other process. The Owens Machine settles completely the problem of mechanical bottle and jar production, lowers the cost to a vanishing point and cannot fail to revolutionize the industry, displace the can as a fruit package and by providing a cleaner and cheaper vessel, it will greatly increase the use and demand for glass bottles and packers."

From Collecting Applied Color Label Soda Bottles, Third Edition, page 3.

After reading Cecil Munsey's Counterfactual History, What if? in the current issue of Bottles and Extras, I can't help but wonder, "What if" Michael J. Owens was unable to borrow a pair of shoes on that day back in 1869? 

Your comments? Please email them.

If you have a soda-related subject that you would like to see here as an "FYI" article, or have information you yourself would like to contribute, don't be shy, send it to: FYI Idea