Collectible Coffee Tins Feature Perky Lithography

Drako Brand Coffee tin canister with Mallard duck graphic on front and back by Drake and Company

Coffee is the world’s most popular beverage, and it’s not surprising that this favorite drink has a large collector following for items associated with its consumption. The largest segment of collectible coffee is antique and vintage coffee tins and cans which are widely available, and prized for their bright colors and high quality, eye-catching graphics.

Rations of Coffee for Fighting Men

By 1850, most middle class American kitchens were equipped with manual coffee grinders for the coffee beans purchased in bulk at the local grocery, but it was the American War Between the States gave coffee a major boost.  For the first time, soldiers’ rations included coffee beans, and following the war, the caffeine habit came home with them and spread to family members.  By the 1900, coffee beans were being delivered door to door in horse drawn wagons, but consumption of coffee grew even more widespread with the development of the vacuum sealed tin introduced by Hills Brothers.

Collectible Coffee Tins and Cans

The development of chromolithography, the ability to print bright and durable graphics on metal in 1914 allowed coffee companies to produce appealing and eye-catching packaging for their products.  Not only did these artistic containers help at point of sale, but consumers were encouraged to save the tins and reuse them in kitchens and workshops for storing cornmeal and nails and screws.  Collectors especially seek the key wind coffee tins.  These one pound cans were vacuum packed, and came with a key that was slotted into a metal tab. When the key was wound, a narrow strip of metal peeled away from the can, freeing the lid.

Golden West Coffee tin canister by the Chosset and Deavers Company, with cowgirl image

Collectible Key Wind Coffee Tin Values

While Folgers and Maxwell House were (and still are) big names in the coffee business, for many years, coffee was produced  and distributed by hundreds if not thousands of small distributors who marketed their own brands throughout the U.S.  For collectors of antique and vintage tins, this means the collecting possibilities are almost infinite. Values depend on condition, rarity and visual appeal.

A Brief History of Coffee

It is believed that coffee originated in Ethiopia around 1000AD and was smuggled into Arabia a few centuries after that.  Coffee at this time was a rare delicacy, and was believed to be the Devil’s drink by early Christians until Pope Vincent III officially pronounced it delicious and innocent of any evil connotations.  In America, coffee consumption grew in a single bound after the Boston Tea Party, and during the Revolution, many of the Founding Fathers hammered out the governing policies of the fledgling nation while sipping the brew in coffee houses.

Today over 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed world-wide annually.  The popularity of the beverage makes it a natural for collectors of all sorts of coffee related items.

-p4A contributing editor Susan Cramer.

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