Dispatches From Denver - Coca-Cola Trivia

For the past ten years, Randy Schaeffer and Bill Bateman have presented one of the favorite events at the Coca-Cola Collectors Club Annual Meeting - Coca-Cola Jeopardy. This year in Denver was no exception. As the game goes on for almost an hour, I only video taped the portion of the program where they introduce the categories, but I think you will enjoy both the humor and the audience participation.

Dispatches from Denver - Small Collectibles

Roger Robinson and Dale Wohlgemuth gave a fascinating presentation about small collectibles.  I always enjoying learning something new from collectors who specialize in an area and love what they collect.  In this case, we all learned about the wide variety of pencils, pens, openers and buttons.

We took a few minutes after the presentation to speak with Roger about his favorite pencils.

Dispatches from the Coca-Cola Collectors Club Meeting

My next few post will all be done from Denver where I am attending the 35th Coca-Cola Collectors Club Annual Meeting.  I will be posting photos and videos of interesting artifacts, collectors or stories I see here.

I hope you enjoy this first video which features the Coca-Cola Trayders, Randy Schaeffer and Bill Bateman, two college professors who bring their thirst for knowledge to the collecting field.  Bill and Randy do a presentation where they select a few Coca-Cola artifacts and give a detailed overview of the item and its historical context.

We shot the videos with a little handheld camera, so please excuse the amateur quality.

Turner Sky Field Commemorative Bottle

Built in 1997 in the home of the Atlanta Braves, the famous and gigantic Coca-Cola contour bottle has witnessed its fair share of victories at Turner Field. As part of Coca-Cola’s Sky Field, the iconic, curvy bottle has welcomed in countless baseball fans from around the world with the same message: we might root for different teams, but we can all enjoy an ice-cold Coca-Cola. After 12 years of loyally celebrating each Braves homer with a fireworks celebration, the beloved bottle is throwing in the towel.

July 2 is the last chance fans will have to visit the bottle and have their photo taken with it.  To celebrate the 12 plus years (and over 1,900 games) with the bottle, the first 15,000 fans to enter the stadium on July 2 will receive a voucher which will allow them to later claim a commemorative 8-ounce bottle.

Fans should join the Turner Field Coca-Cola Bottle Facebook fan page to post their pictures and join other fans in reminiscing about their memories with the bottle.

Nordic Coca-Cola Collectors Club 15 Year Anniversary

Just in case your travel plans bring you to Norway in early June, I received a notice about meeting to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Nordic Coca-Cola Collectors Club in Olso on June 6.  If you were always looking for a reason to make a trip to Norway, here it is.

If you go, send me some photos and I will be happy to post them.

Springtime in Atlanta Swap Meet Video

The Coca-Cola Collectors Club Atlanta Chapter held their annual "Springtime In Atlanta" event April 8-11. This is always a fun event filled with thousands of collectibles both common and hard to find alike. This year, during the swap meet, my colleague, Adam Brown, tagged along to see what the buzz is all about. I'm sure you'll like this video he put together about the experience - and look for my special hat!

Belgium “Our Animals” Bottle Cap Promotion

For the last post highlighting our Earth Day exhibit, I’ll share this bottle cap promotion from Belgium that tested my French language skills. In collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, The Company created two nature preserves in Belgium in 1978. We ran a bottle crown and poster promotion to collect all of the animals of Belgium found under bottle crowns. Some crowns had the WWF “Panda” symbol and for each “Panda” crown sent in, The Company and its bottlers offered donations to the WWF to build the nature preserve. We actually had to try to recall some French to match up the animals on the bottle caps to their proper locations on the map! (I think we did OK).

Super fan gets "Canned" for his birthday

Some friends of the blog sent us this video showing how they 'canned' the office of their boss.  He is a Coke collector and super fan of the brand.  We had to reward their efforts, so we sent them a set of Norman Rockwell prints to give as a birthday gift.  I hope you enjoy the video as much as I did.

A very personal WWII display

One of the most personal pieces we have in the World of Coca-Cola is an item from a Coca-Cola collector who has become a friend of our department.

In the World of Coca-Cola we have an exhibit on the role Coke played with U.S. soldiers during World War II. (The Company rather famously promised that every man in uniform would get a Coke for a nickel, whatever it cost the Company, and we served Coke all over the world during the war -- even sending 64 portable bottling lines overseas to do it.)

In that exhibit for WWII, we have a few of the many letters soldiers wrote home, talking about how drinking was a reminder of home and what they were missing. One of the letters we have on display is from the father of a collector -- Spencer Combs, father of Bill Combs.

This video was filmed with Bill at the World of Coca-Cola in March.

Bill let us put this letter and his dad’s photo in the display. It’s a great example of the connection between Coke and the people who love it.

Bobby's Coca-Cola World

While many Coke collectors seem to have their own mini Worlds of Coca-Cola in their homes, one collector really does have what he calls his own “world” of collecting – his own website!

Bobby Liao from Los Altos, California, has been a Coca-Cola collector for 14 years and a member of The Coca-Cola Collectors Club since 1994. As most collectors do, he “lives” Coke each day, but Bobby has taken his love of Coke one step further and is exhibiting his collection of Coca-Cola Olympic bottles and cans at the Los Altos (California) Library this month!

The exhibit is the second one he’s had at the Los Altos Library. This show features more than 100 limited edition Coca-Cola bottles and cans featuring the Olympic Games over the past century, representing 26 host cities and 26 Olympic sports.

(The photos here are from both exhibits at the library and from the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta when Bobby visited the original World of Coca-Cola.)

Bobby began collecting Coca-Cola bottles in May 1994 when Stanford Stadium was getting ready to host the World Cup 1994 soccer games. He happened to see World Cup Coke bottles on the shelves in a local store, and on a whim, he bought a six-pack. Fourteen years later, with more than 5,000 bottles and cans, he’s still looking for new bottles everywhere he goes.

Those of you who also are collectors may remember your own beginnings – when you bought one thing that later led to an entire house full of Coke items!

How did you start your collection?