Chandy crown bottle caps
It might seem a bit excessive to devote a new separate page to the one Chandy crown bottle cap that we now have in the museum, but it took us a long time to get one of these, and we would still be looking were it not for crown bottle cap collector, Wolfgang Niebel, kindly getting in touch and trading us this example, which he had as a duplicate in his collection.
The Chandy bottle top, or crown cap, you see pictured arrived at the museum in May 2016. It may not look much to the untrained eye, but it is an undoubtedly rare item that we are delighted to have in the museum's collection. It has an old-fashioned cork lining rather than a modern plastic lining and judging too from the wording on the crown cap ("minimum contents 9½ fluid ounces" on its top face and "sugar & saccharin added" and "non-alcoholic" around its sides) we estimate this example must date from the late-1960s or very-early-1970s, making it 45-50 years old, so we're more than happy to overlook its slightly tarnished appearance.
The bottle top is shown here photographed in strong light in order to clearly show its design and wording.
Update February 2017
We are very pleased to say that we have now acquired two more bottle caps, which are identical to each other, but different to the bottle cap you see above.
These caps are a more modern variant dating from the early-1970s. They have the more modern plastic as opposed to cork lining, and do not include all the writing about the contents, instead just featuring the word ‘Chandy’ on them.
Update April 2017
Well, we weren't expecting this, but we now have even more Chandy bottle tops, having recently purchased another six from the ever-popular auction site eBay. These six are of the same design as two above. This means that we now have a total of nine Chandy bottle tops, eight from the 1970s with plastic lining, and one earlier one with a cork lining and more detailed wording on it.
To the untrained eye, these are perhaps not the most attractive of all Chandy items and none of them are in perfect condition, but we are nevertheless delighted to welcome these 40+ year old authentic Chandy items to the museum's collection.
The pictures show the six new additions (the picture on the left for PC/tablet readers) and all nine bottle tops in the museum's collection together (picture below).
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