Here we are, inching toward the end of another summer. There are several items that are iconic Americana, such as apple pie, hot dogs, baseball, and beer. I have written about many topics over the years but have never touched on beer cans. They have an interesting history and some can be quite valuable, so let’s talk beer cans.

The “official” birthday of the beer can is Jan. 24, 1935. The first beer can style was the flat top. It looked like the beer cans on the market today with one exception — they were made of steel and weighed in at 4 ounces. The flat top beer can also brought about the creation of a hefty “church-key” to punch through the steel. The church-key, a collectible market in its own right, was 1/8” thick. Church keys were already being used, but they were not strong enough to get through the thick steel beer can tops.

Cone-top cans

Next up is the cone-top can. These came about in September 1935, with Schlitz being the first to use them. This type of can appealed to smaller breweries that didn’t have the money to revamp their bottle lines. The cone-top could be filled on the same machinery that was used to fill bottles and capped with bottle caps. The cone-top met its demise by 1960 as the big companies had already driven the smaller brewers out of business. There are four different styles of this particular beer can. You don’t see many cone-tops in shops or shows because they were used primarily by small breweries, so production was limited, Keep in mind, once the can was empty it usually went into the trash. Schlitz is the only big company known to have used the cone-top can.

Pull-top cans

In 1963, the beer can industry was forever changed when the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. introduced Iron City beer in “self-opening” cans. Schlitz placed the moniker “Pop Top” on the pull tab cans and by 1965, around 75% of all cans had pull tab tops. I remember that when I was about 11 almost everyone I knew had a pull top chain of varying lengths hanging in their bedroom.

Pull tabs turned out to be an environmental disaster. Animals ingested them, people were in the habit of popping the top and dropping it in their beer and then swallowed or choked on them, people would step on them and get a nasty cut, and as an amateur metal detector/treasure hunter, I still dig up those pull tops.