People just love to collect stuff.
It s no wonder, then, that beer drinkers have long enjoyed collecting just about everything with a brewery name or brand on it what we call breweriana today. Among the first beer collectibles were bottle caps, or crowns, an innovation of the 1890s. A boomlet in breweriana availability began in January 1920 when the onset of Prohibition forced hundreds of breweries and thousands of saloons and taverns to close their doors. There were always individual collectors around, but contact between them was mostly local and usually coincidental. Jr. He soon heard from several kindred spirits in the St. Louis area, and at a meeting at Wright s house in April 1970, the organization known as the Beer Can Collectors of America was born.