Admiring and appreciating the advertising art of The Coca-Cola Company is not a recent phenomenon. Ads in company publications seeking original dispensers and signs date back to the 1930s and 1940s. However, organized collecting did not start until much later. In the early 1970s, two things happened simultaneously. The Coca-Cola Company began a craze with campaigns like “Bring Back the Good Old Trays” showing and offering reproductions of trays from the teens and twenties. This sparked a lot of interest in history and nostalgia fans alike. Around that same time, as collector interest grew, a book titled The Illustrated Guide to the Collectibles of Coca-Cola, by Cecil Munsey, hit the market and drew additional attention to the beautiful artwork of Coca-Cola advertising.
While early efforts to organize collectors tried and failed, one collector from Memphis, Tennessee, Bob Buffaloe, succeeded. He published a newsletter that drew all these strangers into a group. Most were amazed that others shared their interest. Bob organized the first convention in Atlanta in 1975, and The Coca-Cola Collectors Club (then known as The Cola Clan) was on its way. With a newsletter that became more informative and inclusive and with more enthusiasts joining the ranks, the conventions became an annual event.
The second convention, in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, featured the opening of Bill and Jan Schmidt's museum at their bottling plant. Many longtimers like me look back at this event as possibly the very best convention. These conventions became the focal point of the collecting community, something that we anxiously waited for to meet new friends with the same interest, to buy and sell and to stay up all hours of the night talking Coca-Cola. As the years passed, the ranks grew, and the early conventions at Huntsville, San Diego, and Nashville became bigger and better, with the first convention auction being conducted in San Diego. As popularity and values grew, Coca-Cola memorabilia became more and more accepted among advertising collectors and mainstream collectors in general. Today it has evolved as one of the top collectibles for long-term steady growth.
Much of the information during these early years came from Wilbur Kurtz, Jr., The Coca-Cola Company's archivist. He was a great storyteller, with many anecdotes. His love of history and Coca- Cola made him the perfect spokesman for the growing group of Coca-Cola collectors. While some of the information supplied was not totally accurate, it made for great stories. Unfortunately, some of this misinformation stayed with collectors and has become part of history. Compounding the problem was a set of price guides produced in the 1970s that were very helpful on one hand, but contributed to this misinformation on the other hand. It is this inaccurate information that is most difficult to eliminate from collectors' minds. For example, it has been reported that Lillian Russell appeared on Coca-Cola advertising, when it was actually Lillian Nordica. Factual errors like this die hard.
The Coca-Cola Collectors Club reached its peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Membership grew, and the club publication went through a very educational period with the help of Randy Schaeffer and Bill Bateman, two historians who not only published informative and interesting articles, but who also corrected much mis-information while they were serving as the editors. The club has gone through some rocky times over the years but has survived as the main organization for Coca-Cola Collectors. Their regular meetings and local and national conventions remain major events in The Coca-Cola collecting community. I support the club and urge collectors to join as part of the collecting experience. I have always believed that a good educational (non-company directed) club is the glue that holds a healthy collecting community together. 2007 saw the passing of Bill Schmidt, one of the pioneers of The Coca-Cola collecting community. Bill and his wife Jan have contributed a great deal to the Coca-Cola collecting world. Bill will always be remembered and deeply missed.
What's Next?
Over the years I have been asked one question that I really enjoy answering. The question is “What would you collect today that will be valuable in the future?” A wonderful thing about collecting Coca-Cola memorabilia today is that we have, as collectors, a good history. With organized collecting beginning in the early 1970s, the more than thirty years gives us a good history of the pieces that have both succeeded and failed as investments. We can look back at our history as collectors and certainly determine which objects have generated enough interest to increase in value over the past thirty years or so.
If you have absolutely no interest in your collection's value, this is a moot point. But for the most part today's collectors find the entire process of collecting so much more rewarding when they feel that someday all that work, money and, yes, enjoyment have resulted in monetary gain. So learning a lesson from the history of the hobby and the group of collectors that created it can make the collecting experience much more rewarding.
With this history in mind, I think its important to point out areas of Coca-Cola collecting that have failed to escalate in value. Unless you are in complete denial, no one would dispute that fact that buying reproductions for example, is not wise. Made-for-collector items have also turned out to be a complete bust. Collector glasses from fast food restaurants are almost worthless today.
One hope for collectors was the commemorative market. Starting in the mid 1970s, The Coca-Cola Bottlers began celebrating their 75th anniversaries with a commemorative vintage-looking bottle. Along with the bottles, which were very popular, came an endless variety of items like silver ingots, belt buckles, trays, and glasses. All appeared to be popular. Some collectors even specialized in these items as more and more bottlers reached their 75th year. This stuff made money; it wasn't cheap. Collectors loved it and many bought large quantities in hopes of a rising market and big returns, but it never happened. However, the commemorative market continued and still does today, with the primary focus on inexpensively made bottles sold at a great profit. Many of these so-called limited runs were limited to the number that were sold and many “in the know” bought and sold them at the perfect time with a false indication of rarity. These bottles today sell for a fraction of what they were originally. The commemorative bottle market got carried away, as just about everything was commemorated. A good hobby became overloaded, and many collectors discovered they couldn't sell their bottles. Others intending to cash in on the market in years to come also had a rude awakening. I can tell you of more than a few garages full of cases of unopened 75th anniversary Atlanta bottles (the first issued) collecting dust with no possibility of sales in the future. Why? The answer is simple; there were too many made — way too many — and all are in perfect condition, driving down demand and value. The commemorative market is fun and enjoyable. But if you collect commemoratives, do it because you enjoy the items, not because you think they will someday dramatically increase in value. Items that are sought after and go up in value today and in the future are objects that were meant to be discarded, which makes them much scarcer than made-for-collector's items, which never had any purpose than being collected.
However, get your hands on the latest clock given away by the bottlers or neon and lightup signs that are no longer being used, cardboard point-of-purchase displays, especially anything that has a mechanical aspect to it, small coolers used in stores or gas stations, truck banners, or any new product or particular campaign material. These items won't be around in twenty years. Coca-Cola's regional products, such as bottles made for particular areas, Christmas packaging, etc. have traditionally been good pieces to buy and put away. Get to know Coca-Cola truck drivers, store owners, bottling plant managers, and anyone who handles advertising. It is not easy to get this stuff, which is what makes it valuable.
The Coca-Cola Company continues to create fantastic advertising campaigns. Who doesn't love the polar bears, but buy that cute stuffed Coke polar bear because you really like it, not because you think it is going to go up in value, because it is not. However, find a polar bear cutout display in a supermarket, destined to go in the garbage after it's display time, and someday you will have a true collectible — not today, but someday.
Building a fun and interesting collection or acquiring future items that will be sure to increase in value is not as easy as going to the store and buying the next newly issued so-called “collectible.”