[gtohunter]

Found this in an antique Radio bar we were preparing to transport. Never saw one like it and would guestimate it's from around the 50's?? It's "sealed" but obviously not the best as the liquid level looks to be down from where you'd expect it to be.
Any ideas??

[johnta1]

I think they had a date of some kind on the bottom.
As for the curved neck, I've seen a lot of bottles with all kinds of stretching, curves etc at tourist areas.

[gtohunter]

Found info on bottom of the bottle....McKeesport, PA (where I lived as a kid), and an "F" with a circle with an "I" inside of it. No dates though.

[Chris65LeMans]

Looks like someone heated the neck and curved it. There's sure to be a website out there that will help you track down info - very likely some crazies out there who collect those things. I'd bet that the curved neck hurts it's value.

[gtohunter]

edit: GTOhunter, I was replying to your message, but unfortunately I clicked the wrong button and deleted it. Sorry about that....I'm new to the moderator position, and am still getting used to how to use the functions

[oldman]

That's where I am from and still live today. Mckeesport, PA . McKeesport has all kind of history. There were all kinds of distributers and manufacturers of products. National Tube made pipe for the the war effort in WWII, and Christy Parks Works made bombs, shells and torpedoes.

[gtohunter]

Originally Posted by oldman

That's where I am from and still live today. Mckeesport, PA . McKeesport has all kind of history. There were all kinds of distributers and manufacturers of products. National Tube made pipe for the the war effort in WWII, and Christy Parks Works made bombs, shells and torpedoes.

Born and raised in Green Valley, spent a lot of time in McKeesport (a dime on the bus). Piano lessons on Walnut St, trips to the Kodak shop and the TV repair shop, belonged to the Methodist church on top of the hill. Worked Homestead Steel and Beckwith machinery until job market crapped out and then moved south.

[1_Wild_Cat]

The "I inside an oval" maker's mark is the mark of Owens-Illinois Glass Co. and was used from 1954 to the present....

[oldman]

Small world. Graduated class of 73 in McKeesport. 711 students. Worked at
machine shops in the area till 04 when I opened up a auto shop.

[David Jones]

Never been to McKeesport.

[gtohunter]

Originally Posted by 1_Wild_Cat

The "I inside an oval" maker's mark is the mark of Owens-Illinois Glass Co. and was used from 1954 to the present....

That's a lot more than I knew an hour ago ! Thanks

[gtohunter]

Originally Posted by oldman

Small world. Graduated class of 73 in McKeesport. 711 students. Worked at
machine shops in the area till 04 when I opened up a auto shop.

Worked 30yrs in SC with a mech. engineer that went to Vocational, was from Versailles ave. on top of McKeesport...a guy by the name of Jim Patterson...was/is a pontiac guy.

[Stuart]

Back in the 1970s, it was kind of a fad for the game of skill booths on the midways at county and state fairs to have stretched or curved Coke bottles as prizes. My guess is this is probably one of them, and it was refilled and capped by someone who had a bottle capping machine.

[GT182]

No, it's not a normal Coke bottle. Some one did this to it. I have a couple of them from Massena, NY and several other cities. None tho from McKeesport, PA.

I passed up a wooden Coke case yesterday at our local flea market a couple of miles down the street from me. It had 24 old green Coke bottles included, with some that had no city name on the bottom. After finding 3 like that I passed on it.

[Stuart]

I had a job many years ago where we would go on break and have Cokes, and we had a little game where we'd compare the names of the bottling plants on the bottom of our bottles. Most had been bottled right in Minneapolis, but sometimes we'd find them from a long distance away. One day, one of the guys had a bottle that originally came from Cairo, Egypt.

[Heybuck]

Originally Posted by Stuart

I had a job many years ago where we would go on break and have Cokes, and we had a little game where we'd compare the names of the bottling plants on the bottom of our bottles. Most had been bottled right in Minneapolis, but sometimes we'd find them from a long distance away. One day, one of the guys had a bottle that originally came from Cairo, Egypt.

Were they new bottles or had they been recycled? That is, in the US, were the old Coke bottles returned to a shop who in turn sent them away for cleaning ad refilling?

That was certainly the case here many years ago. Some old bottles really started to show a lot of scratches and rubbing just from being handled so many times. We used to get $0.05c for each bottle we returned to the shop.

[GT182]

The old Coke bottles back in the day were recycled. Collected and cleaned for reuse at the closest Coke plant, refilled and sent out. Mind you the bottles once filled eventually traveled great distances all over the US. So bottles from one plant could end up thousands of miles away at another plant. Then the cycle started all over again.

[Lightfoot]

I used to collect 6 1/2oz, 10oz, and 16oz refillable Coke bottles, just for the different placenames on the bottom. Up until about 1995, I could go to supermarkets in northwest Indiana and get the 8-packs of Pint bottles. I'd stand in the isle and hand pick my own assortment.
After I drank them, only the common ones would be brought back for deposit on my next trip. I was only able to do this for a short time because I lived about 50 miles away in Michigan, and wasn't aware of those old bottles still in use until late 1992 or so. Michigan changed over to the Half Liter bottles in 1978.
All the 1 Pint bottles in Indiana were 1982 or older. The oldest ones were 1967. Those would have heavy wearing around the base and 'waist' circumfrence points.

I never saw a McKeesport PA bottle. Never heard of it until I saw this thread.
I've picked up numerous other cities (Coke bottles) that I've never heard of though. The most out of east BF one I have is Glasgow Mont.

I enjoyed looking for the older bottles in roadside ditch lines after I moved to Georgia. The 6 1/2 oz bottles from the fifties and sixties are cool. The date 'codes' on the side are not always cut and dried until about 1965.
I think I can see a '63' or '65' on gtohunter's bottle.

[Lightfoot]

Originally Posted by GT182

The old Coke bottles back in the day were recycled. Collected and cleaned for reuse at the closest Coke plant, refilled and sent out. Mind you the bottles once filled eventually traveled great distances all over the US. So bottles from one plant could end up thousands of miles away at another plant.

This was what made it fun for me when I started collecting. It's like imagining all the stories these bottles could tell.
I have a 1971 pint bottle that was in 'mint' condition when I bought it filled with fresh Coke in 1994. That might have been sitting in someone's garage for a long time, or lost under the back seat of an early 70s car, or hidden in the brush near a country road where someone heaved it out the window....

I continue to keep an eye out for them when I'm walking the road or in the vicinity of old gas stations, etc. At the Illinois Route 66 musium in Pontiac Ill, there is a case of the small bottles in one of the displays. I pulled out every bottle and looked at the bottom, out of compulsion.

[1965gp]

It will be interesting to see if we ever get back to these. I was in a hotel two weeks ago and they had water in a box- like milk.

Not far fetched to think we could get back to recycling brand specific bottles