Original Listing Description

This is what is generally known as a Thanksgiving Coke bottle. It is in the well known hobble skirt design. This bottle is very clean. It stands 7-3/4 inches tall. Machine made. Rare ice blue coloring. Small flea bite on the side of the neck/shoulder Overall nice bottle. See pics. It is embossed with the following: Front: COCA-COLA TRADE MARK REGISTERED BOTTLE PAT'D NOV. 16, 1915 Back: COCA-COLA TRADE MARK REGISTERED MIN. CONTENTS 6-FL. OZS. Base: A. G. W. 22 - 5 A little info: A G W……………… American Glass Works, Richmond, Virginia (1908-1925) and Paden City, West Virginia (1918-c.1935). Bottles (especially crown lip style soda bottles) of the teens and 1920s from the VA and surrounding area with “A.G.W.” marked on the base are virtually certain to be products of this company (not to be confused with the earlier American Glass Works of Pittsburgh, an unrelated company). Machine-made bottles date after 1916 (Toulouse 1971:23). The Richmond plant burned in 1925 and was not rebuilt. A little history: American Glass Works The American Glass Works opened in 1908 at Richmond, Virginia. The plant originally made medicinal bottles for Sauer’s Extract, a company also run by C.F. Sauer, the glass house owner. Eventually, the factory made a general line of bottles, including soda bottles. The plant had at least one machine by 1916. About 1919, the American Glass Works bought out the Duquesne Glass Co. at Paden City, West Virginia, but the Richmond plant burned in 1925 and was not rebuilt. The Paden City factory made essentially the same products and remained in business until ca. 1935. Mouth-blown bottles (also called Blown In Mold or BIM) were embossed with a two- or three-digit number placed below the glass house logo (e.g., A.G.W. / 133). Machine-made bottles, however, were embossed with a one- or two-digit number, a dash, then a single-digit number, beneath the mark (e.g., A.G.W. / 67-5). We have only discovered a single hobble-skirt bottle embossed with a city/ state designation on the base. However, there are numerous examples embossed with the A.G.W. base mark and American’s typical machine-made numerical code. These numbers deserve some discussion. On the mouth-blown bottles, the typical three-digit number was almost certainly a model or catalog code. The double code on machine-made bottles is not as easy to explain. The first two digits (to the left of the dash) may be model codes or mold numbers. We have recorded those in a range from 9 to 75 so they cannot be date codes. The numbers to the right of the dash, however, are always single digits between 1 and 5. These may be date codes from 1921 to 1925. Our single hobble-skirt bottle with the city/state designation was almost certainly made in 1919, shortly after the Coca-Cola Co. issued the requirement. The others may have been made prior to that time. Since these are fairly common, at least some were most likely made at least as early as 1918. We may never know why the American Glass Works apparently dropped Coca-Cola bottle production early. If, indeed, the single digits on the bottle bases are date codes, the company may have stopped making soft drink bottles when the Richmond plant burned. Thanks for looking. Always happy to combine shipping on multiple listings! (Condition: Pre-Owned)

Note: This item has been sold and is no longer available. This page serves as a historical price reference for Coca Cola collectors and appraisers.