Arguably,7,000 is a lot to pay for an empty bottle of used Coca-Cola, yet Jim Sonneville of Des Moines County understands the hobby, if not the economy, such a tempting value for a probably mundane item.
Sonneville is a pilot of FedEx’s commercial systems. When he is not delivering the portions and materials for the operation of the factories, he can be discovered by searching the Internet, sales of genuine properties and auctions of infrequent Coca bottles.
Coca bottles, intended solely to contain the ubiquitous comfortable drink, look like an object for construction, a hobby, yet for Sonneville, unique sinuous bottles are more than just containers: this is a portion of cutting-edge corporate history that he discovers fascinating.
Sonneville is rarely the only one interested in all things Coca-Cola, as there is a global network of creditors who are constantly looking for the right bottle to cover their collection.
The ultimate bottle Sonneville keeps looking for has a label valued at $7,000. And he admits that he would never pay so much for a bottle of bachelor, he lives in the hope of one day finding himself with the almost mythical bottle “Hutchinson” in a wonderful valer.
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If Sonneville ever digs up the mythical bottle of amber with direct edges, he will be awarded a position of honor among the more than 1,200 bottles of Coca-Cola on display in a committed room and workshop next to the basement of his cozy rural home in Des Moines County.
Go downstairs to the finished basement, turn right and pause while Sonneville turns on a transfer and suddenly finds himself in a treasure trove of Coca-Cola bottles. bottles, with the date and place of manufacture.
In the center of the room, a polished table composed of more bottles and a decided combination of packaging and promotion material. The lighting and dark wood give the room a richness that is more suitable for exhibiting works of art or valuable stones, than empty ones. Bottles of Coca Cola.
Sonneville is a member of the coca-Cola collectors fraternity around the world.
“I think we’re the largest organization of our kind around the world,” he said. “And that’s because Coke is known everywhere. There are a lot of us there. “
Like all collections, Sonneville’s global bottle had to start somewhere, and may hint at its beginnings as an irreproachable gift from an adult son who discovered a bottle buried long ago while running on a structure site.
“One of my sons, Mike, started replacing a water pipe on Rock Island when he discovered that old coke bottle and the idea that he might find it interesting,” Sonneville recalls. “He’s right, because I’m curious to know where the bottle arrived. here from and when it was done. “
These questions led to searches on Sonneville’s website, and he soon set about chasing antique dealers and reading auction lists to see if he could climb into the bottles he had begun to accumulate.
“I was a trucking force at the time, so I was looking at stalls that might have old bottles of Coca-Cola,” Sonneville said. “Then I got to a point where I would warn at Coca-Cola bottling plants and ask if they had a demonstration of old Coca-Cola bottles and, if they had any, I could take a look at them.
“People found out I was interested in old Coca-Cola bottles, so they would call me when they discovered something interesting. I even got a call from someone who had inherited a pharmacy that had been closed for 40 years and had still filled coca-cola bottles in the basement.
Initially, Sonneville was interested in bottles from a Rock Island bottler, but his interest grew temporarily. Unintentionally, Sonneville had been bitten by the virus from the collection, and soon discovered that his selected box was rich in collectibles and history.
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The bottles Sonneville collected have a unique shape with a long history. They are known as “entrail skirt” bottles and hit the market in 1915. Previously, each and every bottler across the country could simply put Coca-Cola in a bottle of their choice.
It’s those pre-1915 bottles that Sonneville discovers intriguing because they tell the story of the birth of an iconic American industry.
“Most people know that Coca-Cola started after the Civil War and the concept of a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia,” Sonneville explained.
That pharmacist John Pemberton, a Civil War veteran who worked at Jacob’s popular Pharmacy. Pemberton was concerned about the amount of alcohol being consumed in the country and came up with the concept of a “temperance drink. “
In 1869, Pemberton worked with a variety of herbs, adding cocoa leaves and kola nuts, to create a drink he called “French Wine Coca. “The ingredients were combined into a syrup that Pemberton sold to soda fountains. There it was combined with sparkled water and sold without a prescription.
The original bottle containing the syrup is very much from creditors like Sonneville. It is an amber glass jar, with direct walls and an ornate stopper. Only a few are known, however Sonnveille and other creditors continue their investigation.
“Pemberton was doing pretty well with his temperance drink, just promoting soda fountains, and then in 1899 he made a deal with Asa Cander,” Sonneville said. “Cander came here with the concept of promoting Coca-Cola syrup to bottlers who would then load sparkled water and sell Coca-Cola in individual bottles. That’s when the company took off.
The product was then sold in a variety of bottles. The oldest in Sonneville’s collection is a labeled, bottled straight-edged bottle in Vicksburg, Mississippi, highly prized by local farmers.
“Around 1915, the other people who ran Coca-Cola had a popular bottle and that’s when they switched to the ‘shackled skirt’ shape,” Sonneville said. “This is what is still used. “
Sonneville admitted that Coca-Cola remains largely a regional comfort beverage with the base of its sales in the Southeast.
“It seems like Iowa is more of a Pepsi cola region because it’s a sweeter drink,” Sonneville said.
As Sonneville takes his guided tour of the bottle collection, he stops to highlight the evolution of the bulb-shaped bottle, lifts a Coca-Cola bottle without the familiar shade of green, and explains that this bottle design was used in the early 1940s.
“The green color of a Coca-Cola bottle comes from the copper used in the cooking process, however, there was a war and copper was very difficult to find,” Sonneville said. “So in the war years, the other Coca-Cola people made a transparent bottle and then went back to the copper bottle at the end of the war.
Sonneville also reports on a package containing small straight-walled bottles containing flavored Coca-Cola, which, he explained, are sold in Europe and used to flavor gin drinks.
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On the demonstration table are boxes containing bottles of Coca-Cola that were the first use of the six-pack, now a beverage industry standard.
Sonneville will admit that his collection takes its own life, but insists it’s a hobby, not a business. While other bottle lovers may engage in the industry and sell their bottles at a profit, Sonneville has never sold a bottle it has acquired.
They’re all in the basement bottle room, where he hopes the elusive bottle of Hutchinson Coca-Cola at a wonderful price will one day be a home.