Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Winter Finds #9 2016

A while back fellow collector David Curenton spotted a Life Saver Beverage Co. Centredale, RI soda bottle in the window of a deli in Warwick. I honestly doubted him at first, it sounded too good to be true! Well, I stopped by one day, and behold! There it was. The owner was out, so I vowed to return the next time she was in. Well, that “next time” was more than a year later. Upon arriving I was alarmed to see no bottles in the front window. Thankfully the bottle was just where I left it. To my surprise, owner was happy to part with the bottle along with a few others, stating how much work it was to keep them dust-free. So there you have it, one of the coolest RI soda bottles out there!


A digger from Maine was kind enough to contact me when he dug a Fisk & Co. Druggists Pawtucket, RI medicine. At 6-1/2", it was an unlisted size!


There are few bottles that seem to come with endless variations. Palmer & Madigan Importers Providence, RI is one of them. Almost every single Palmer & Madigan bottle I've come across has been different! There are so many variations that it's just too tedious to say how it's unlisted, so I'll just say it's a new variant.


For the past four years I have been eyeballing a Red Fox Co. Providence, RI ABM crown top soda at a RI antique shop. Two things have kept me from buying it, the exorbitant price tag ($18, which is robbery for a shoulder embossed soda), and the extensive damage (lots of cracks). It's a bottle most collectors would toss over their shoulders, but to me it was the earliest Red Fox bottle known, and thus worthy of acquiring. I finally managed to negotiate a trade (two nice colored bottles for the Red Fox), and while they clearly got the better deal, I now have the bottle, and it no longer taunts me when I visit the shop.


After winning a nice ACL soda on ebay, the seller told me he had a few more bottles I could look at. One of them was a nice Colaluca Bottling Co. Providence, RI ABM crown top quart. The listed small size version is very hard to find, and this quart also has a backwards 9 in the 79 Coggeshall St. address. Nice!