We all grew up with Coca-Cola—it’s as American as apple pie. It doesn’t matter how old or young we are, we all have memories of the distinct taste, the iconic glass bottle, the red-and-white logo, and perhaps we even had a favorite Coca-Cola commercial on television.
The Lynn family takes the meaning of Coca-Cola memories to a whole new level. Their extensive collection of Coca-Cola advertising, signage, company publications, promotional products, and more will be sold in a Skinner Discovery auction on October 12 and 13, 2011.
With roots dating back to 1916, the Lynns are long time residents of Bakersfield, California, the home of California oil, farming, and Buck Owens. Samuel Tilden Lynn opened the first Coca-Cola franchise for Kern County, CA in the early 1920s, where he and his wife, Odelia Delphine Hartmann Lynn, introduced Coca-Cola to the customers of their Star Soda Works. They gave away a couple of bottles of the new product with the purchase of every case of Whistle Orange, Delaware Punch or Sarsaparilla.
Over time, their customers started coming in and asked for more of the “brown stuff.” Coca-Cola became so popular that they dropped their other products and began selling only Coke. The Lynn family lived through the Great Depression, and as a result they learned to save everything, just in case. The result is a truly impressive collection of Coca-Cola memorabilia.
Featured items include early vending machines, a salesman’s miniature sample of a Coca-Cola cooler with an attached sales catalogue, and a rare neon “Have a Coke” sign from the 1940s. The Lynns also saved early bottling machinery and equipment, including a rare foot-powered “crowning” machine, as well as business correspondence between the family and early Coca-Cola executives.
Such a comprehensive range of Coca-Cola antiques and collectibles is a rare find. With the Lynn collection, both aficionados of Coke ephemera and general collectors seeking to pick up a great piece of 20th century American history can find really interesting material.
Organized collecting of Coca-Cola memorabilia began in earnest in the early 1970s with the Coca-Cola Collectors Club as well as many regional groups. Unlike other collectibles which are generational, having touched lives mainly during the era when those items were popular, Coca-Cola memorabilia has remained an important collectible from the earliest days of the company right through the 20th century and into the 21st.
The iconic beverage’s characteristic packaging and name branding through the art of advertising has made them recognizable throughout the world. They employed some of the most noted American artists, turning calendars, trays, signs, and more into true art.
We’d love to know, what are your memories of Coca-Cola?
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This was a GREAT!!!!!! website i am in middle school and we are doing a research paper on Coca-Cola and we had four topics to do from our question one of my topics was to do it on souviners and antiques. Now I am going to tell you I went to alot of websites and this one gave me a lot of information and I also really injoyed the story so THANK YOU!!!:-) 🙂
Im a former collector looking to sell my 8 0z six pack collection,if anyones intrested e mail me.
While certainly collectible, the niche aspect of the collection would make it prohibitive for us to offer at auction.