Welcome back! I am
nearly through with cataloging the Otis collection! This week I will cover some recent dug and
purchased bottles. I recently met the
owner of a very large dump in Warwick,
RI. It was so large, in fact, that 10 years of
heavy digging only touched 10-15% of the dumps surface area. While those I talked to thought the best
spots were dug out, I knew it had plenty of life left. My first meeting with the owner involved a
walk-through that produced two unlisted RI sodas that were discarded by earlier
diggers.
A crown top sodas from The
Hebe Co. Prov. R.I. are quite
common. I have a hard time leaving
behind RI sodas at dig sites, and I was pretty surprised to see that this
example was an unlisted 9” size. The
listed examples are 9-7/8”.
Another very common RI soda is from the American Bottling Co. Incorporated Limited Providence, R.I. Their blobs come BIM and ABM, and they have a
number of BIM crown tops too. This
example was an ABM crown top, which was unlisted. The only ABM sodas from this company before
now were shoulder embossed versions.
A relatively new member to the bottle club has already
proven herself to be a dedicated digger.
Leona has made some nice discoveries at the dumps she visits. One of her more recent finds was a Roger Williams Bottling Co. (star) 219 Gansett
Ave. Cranston, RI aqua crown top.
This makes my 11th Roger Williams variant, there are no
listed aqua versions, and none with the 219 address and the star.
One company’s bottles that are pretty much common in any of
its forms are those of the Red Fox
Beverages Providence, R.I. When I
saw a green sided seltzer bottle, I knew right away that this was the best Red
Fox bottle around.
A few years back I acquired a Somerset Bottling Co. Central Falls, RI art deco soda. It was in a lot of bottles I had bought at
one of the club’s summertime tailgate shows.
This is a completely unlisted bottle.
Somerset, Massachusetts
is a good half-hour drive from Central
Falls, so I can’t see any connection to the
towns.
