
Waterloo Milk Co Milk Bottle 1940
This milk bottle is from the Waterloo IL Illinois Milk Company and featured a red-painted label, Ca 1940 The label on the backside of the bottle displays two babies and states “Babies Grow With Us”.
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Dairy collectibles include milk bottles, bottle caps, milk cans, wooden crates, signs, trays, ice cream containers, clocks and calendars. Milk bottles had the company names embossed or painted on them. The manufacturer’s name was also carved into the early wooden milk crates that carried the product in it.
Dairy signs were made out of cardboard or tin and often featured children or families. By the early 1900’s, advertising messages included how drinking milk was healthy for everyone, such as “Milk Belongs in Every Meal”, “Milk Builds Great Athletes” and “No One Ever Outgrows the Need for Milk”.
Some of the earliest dairy collectibles are from the small dairies in the late 1800’s that were local. Originally, milk was scooped directly from the farmer’s churn into jugs that customers would leave on their doorsteps. The milk was delivered by horse-drawn carriages. By the early 1900’s, small town dairies were virtually everywhere and the farmers competed against each other as they packaged and sold their milk in bottles that had their names on them. In the larger cities, dairies competed against both large dairies and the smaller mom-and-pop ones.
Inventions such as milk bottles, milking machines, pasteurization equipment and refrigerated tanks helped make milk healthier and easier to get to people in all cities. It’s not known for certain when the first milk bottle was introduced. Crockery type jars were originally used in the late 1870’s. One of the first glass milk bottles was developed in 1884 by a New York pharmacist, Dr. Thatcher. Thatcher’s “Common Sense Milk Bottle” had caps that were sealed with a waxed paper disk and protected the milk from germs. Thatcher realized that the contaminated milk had been causing many juvenile deaths after watching milkmen ride up to homes and dip milk from dirty cans and pour it into customer’s jugs. Thatcher’s milk bottles were embossed with an image of a farmer milking a cow and stated “Absolutely Pure Bottled Milk”. Originals of these are very hard to find and considered valuable.
Milk bottles are the biggest overall single category of dairy collectibles. Many antique advertising collectors are interested in the early milk bottles that were used for home deliveries and have embossments or “pyroglazed” paintings with the names of the dairies on them. The dairies wanted their company names on the bottles so they would get returned to them and reused. Milk bottles were mostly round through the 1950’s, then square shape became more popular. Otherwise, bottles tend to look very similar with clear glass and either a short or medium length neck. They also had a rounded collar but not a wide mouth to make pouring easy. The value of the bottles depend on the condition, the size, the dairy, the image and message, and the paint color.
As manufacturers improved making milk bottles they found it was less expensive to change from embossed labels to applied colored labels know as ACL’s. Bottles with ACL’s and ones that used embossed slug plates are often considered valuable. By the 1960’s, glass milk bottles were replaced with paper cartons and plastic milk containers that were less expensive to make but preserved the milk’s freshness.
Today, when collectors want to show their antique milk bottles they are often filled up with white sand or small white styrofoam pellets to make them look like they have milk.
This milk bottle is from the Waterloo IL Illinois Milk Company and featured a red-painted label, Ca 1940 The label on the backside of the bottle displays two babies and states “Babies Grow With Us”.
Circa 1950 Metal Cooler from Griesedieck Bros Brewery, St. Louis, MO. The GB Brand outsold Budweiser for many years and sponsored the St Louis Cardinals Baseball team for a long time.
The Griesedieck brothers brewery was a flagship brewery in St Louis, outselling the Budweiser brand of Anheuser Busch for many years. The family was involved in multiple breweries in St Louis and in Belleville and East St. Louis, Illinois also at one time or another.
Circa 1940s Griesedieck Bros Lighted Back Bar Sign, St. Louis, MO. This brewery was originally called the Griesedieck National Brewery and the family was involved in multiple breweries in Belleville and East St. Louis, Illinois in addition to the Saint Louis market.
Circa 1950 Griesedieck Bros Double Mellow and Lager Flat Top Beer Cans, St. Louis, MO. This brewery was in business for many years and was originally called the Griesedieck National Brewery in Saint Louis Missouri. The Griesedieck family was involved in multiple breweries in St Louis and in Belleville and East St. Louis, Illinois
Ca 1940s Porcelain Sidewalk Street Sign from the Pevely Dairy, St. Louis, MO. This double sided porcelain sign was designed to sit in the metal stand and advertise to patrons coming from either direction that the business sold Pevely Ice Cream products inside.
John Bardenheier Wine & Liquor Co. from St. Louis, MO. Features a self-framed tin sign advertising Progress Rye Brand with Grandma and Grandpa. The Bardeneier brand was well known and had a broad distribution of both their whiskey and wine products for many years.
1920s Gin Seng Soft Drink Metal Serving Tray. Advertised as the “Beverage of Purity”. Ginseng has been advertised more recently as a product to help enhance overall energy as well as finding a large market for the male population to help support duration and strength sexually. It is a herb which is put into drinks and food to help in these causes.
1930s Tin over Cardboard Soda Sign from the Fred Husemann Soda Bottling Company in Red Bud, Illinois. Mr. Husemann was in business from approximately 1920 to 1960 in this town in Randolph County, IL.
This is a Jic Jac soda button sign made out of celluloid over cardboard 1950’s.