1st Coca-Cola Bottle 1899-1900 Chattanooga Bottling Co. DIXIE Straight Side

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1st Coca-Cola Bottle 1899-1900 Chattanooga Bottling Co. DIXIE Straight Side:
$150000.00

Incredibly rare 1899-1900 Coca-Cola bottle hand-blown with an applied Crown-Top, no cracks, chips or bruises. Mid script, no town name, double stamped (ghost stamped) Dixie Glass Works out of Tallapoosa, GA. Arguably the first manufacturer of embossed Coke bottles, the same exact stampings of both the Chattanooga block letter Coke Hutches.This most likely is the first Coke bottle embossed with the iconic Coca-Cola Spenserian script logo!
From one of the onlynon-unionized glass manufacturers operatingduring the 15-month-long Glass Bottle Blowers Association (GBBA) nationwide union strike (April 8, 1899 – July 1, 1900), coincidentally right when the Chattanooga Lawyers Benjamin F. Thomas & Joseph B. Whitehead were first bottling Coke, then parting ways (July 21st, 1899 – April ?, 1900).With the realization that many hand-blown Crown-Top Coke bottles predate the Coke Hutchinson bottles by several years, it casts a new light on these. They were in full swing by 1895 and certainly when Coke was first being bottled up in Chattanooga at the turn of the century. I\'ve proven that, see my other listing a datedon the heel 1899 Biedenharn Crown-Top bottle made by Streator.

Coca-Cola Hutchinson Bottles

The Root Glass Co. and the Chattanooga Glass Co. both opened their doors in 1901. Root was fairly linear in their numbering. There are earlier examples of larger slug-plate Crown-Top bottles marked with a cruder company logo and lower number \"RGCO 225\" made by Root for Biedenharn.They also started dating soda bottles on the heel in 1908. Many of those coveted Alabama Coke Hutches were made well after by either of them, and the other variants by bottlers like DOC that are the same molds don\'t have dates. The Alabama Coke hutches were not proven to be Coke bottlers until 1902 and later through newspaper archives. Starting with Crawford Johnson Sr, who opened the Birmingham Bottling Company, their Hutch is marked with \"ROOT 405\" on the heel, which would date 1904. Most likely, they all started with used Hutches like Biedenharn, and would explain the existence of actual Coke Hutch crates from pre-existing bottlers from Nashville, Logansport, Emporia, and Roanoke. There are only two Coke Hutches that could be from 1899 or later, equally tied with this bottle, marked only with \"Dixie\" from the Dixie Bottling Works; those are the Chattanooga Coke block letter Hutches. The next would be the block letter Atlanta Coke Hutch or the Property Of Coke Hutch (my favorite), and they would date 1900 at the earliest. Both Chattanooga lawyers, after separating in 1900, had to take on business partners; the fact that they even used Hutches shows their lack of revenue. Valdosta was also proven to be a bottler of Coke through the newspaper archives in 1897. That Hutch is marked only with a \"VBW\" underneath and can not be dated. It has a newer-looking watermelon design with no slug plate line, very similar to the Brunswick Coke Hutch, which would date to 1903 or later. There are plenty of Crown-Top Coke bottles that predate those Alabama Coke Hutches by years.Los Angles (1902), Denver (1902), Jacksonville (1902), Tampa (1902), Chicago (1901), Elizabethtown (1901), Louisville (1901), Shelbyville (1901), New Orleans (1902), Kansas City (1902), Buffalo (1902), Charlotte (1902), Cincinnati (1901), Oklahoma City (1902), Shawnee (1902), Harrisburg (1902), Columbia (1902), Charleston (1902), Knoxville (1902), Nashville (1900), Dallas (1902), Houston (1902), Bristol (1902), Clifton Forge (1902), Norfolk (1901), Roanoke (1902), Beckley (1902) and Parkersburg (1902). If you search for early Coke horse and buggy delivery wagons, you will find many pictures of Crown-Top bottles shown in Hutch cases and pictured in early bottling works. Coke and Biedenharn Hutches, even the Pepsi Hutch all seem to date from 1904-07, hand-blown Crown-Top bottles were in full swing much earlier.

The Crown & Cork Seal Co.

The Crown and Cork Seal bottle cap was patented in 1892 by William Painter of Baltimore. In 1894, he had patented the bottle opener, and by 1899, he had a U.S. patent for his automatic Crown-Top bottling machine. By the late 1890\'s, most successful bottlers had moved on to the hand-blown Crown-Top bottle. Shown in the National Bottlers Gazette full-page advertisement from 1896. And the American Brewers\' Review Vol 12 showing 3,840 \"Crown and Seal Machines\" in use nationwide as of Jan 15, 1899! It was a smash hit with bottlers of soda and beer; consequently, there was a Crown-Top bottle and equipment shortage shortly after the turn of the century. This was further complicated by the 15 month long GBBA (Glass Bottle Blowers Association) union strike (April 8, 1899 – July 1, 1900). And the invention of the first fully automatic bottle-blowing machine, patented in 1904 by Michael J. Owens.Hutches were used again to fill the void for the bottlers and glass manufacturers. The used and now outdated Hutch equipment was readily available for a new franchisee to get up and running on a shoestring budget. This explains why those were produced with such later markings like no visible slug plate, newer glass, and why you can find some Hutches leading up into the 1920\'s.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but the ONLY payment option I am accepting for this expensive bottle is cash on the glass. Thanks.