Your Guide to Collecting Vintage Pepsi Bottles
Ice-cold Pepsi has been enjoyed in bottles since before 1903. Since the company initially operated on the franchise plan, various bottlers used unique Pepsi bottles in different regions of the country, leading to an instant hobby for collectors who wanted them all. Find collectible Pepsi bottles on eBay.
What types of vintage Pepsi bottles are there?The first bottles used in most locations were 6.5-ounce Hutchinson bottles. These bottles had a removable stopper top held in place with a wire cage. Soon, many of the franchises started using blob bottles. These bottles were unique since glass companies in the city where Pepsi was bottled made them. If you look closely at these bottles, you can see a little mark near the base where workers separated the bottle from its glass mold. Different bottle producers used different shoulder techniques with most applying the hand-blown glass shoulder after removing it from its mold. No standard Pepsi bottle existed until 1940.
Dating old Pepsi BottlesGeneric bottles without any embossing were the first used by Pepsi. Workers applied paper labels to the earliest bottles. Most local bottlers went to embossing in 1933, but some stuck with paper labels until 1940. Slowly, over many years, bottles changed. If you are trying to collect old Pepsi bottles, look for these changes:
- Amber bottles: Employees put Coke in a dark amber bottle until 1907. Collectors should look at these bottles to make sure that the code A204 is not embossed on these bottles because those are official Pepsi bottle reproductions.
- Wave-like embossing: Pepsi bottles with the company's name embossed in wave-like fashion on their shoulders were generally made between 1935 and 1940.
- Applied color label: Employees made these glass Pepsi bottles between 1945 and 1948. If there are two dots between the words Pepsi and Cola, then they are called double-dot bottles, and collectors often pay a premium for these.
- Two full glasses: Bottles that say "two full glasses" on them were made in the 1950s.
- Swirl bottles: Bottles with a swirl on their necks with the word "Pepsi" written around them and have an oval circle surrounding the word are called swirl bottles. These bottles were made in the late 1950s.
Yes, vintage Pepsi bottles made in the 1940s have a date code on them near the glass Pepsi bottle's base. The number will usually start with 1 or 2 ahead of the letter A. The numbers following the A are the last two digits of the year the bottle was made. For example, a bottle with 1A44 on it would have been made in 1944.
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