# My Niagara Dry collection



## NiagaraDryCollector

I've got a rather large Niagara Dry collection (as evidenced by my username), and I've also recently set up a Facebook page called Niagara Dry Beverages (named after the bottling company).

I've got far too many images for this thread, so I went and made an album on the page containing the images of my collection. The images are also in the other albums, but they're mixed in among images of other Niagara Dry stuff that I don't own (yet).

Click here to view the photo album of my collection.

If you check out the other pictures on the page, you'll notice that there are pictures of various signs hung on a wall, and pictures of Niagara Dry bottles and products in a brown shelving unit. Those pictures are of the Niagara Dry collection of a fellow collector. He has more products than I do (like a damn bottle trough!) but I have way more bottle variants.


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## RCO

a few of those bottles I've never even seen before like the no deposit test bottle and clear embossed/acl bottle . don't really see a lot of Niagara dry bottles where I live , bit too far north .     I 've found  a few of the green bottles missing paper label obviously when swimming a few times though


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## NiagaraDryCollector

The clear ones are "Niagra" Dry and were bottled in Buffalo. Kind of a copyright infringement thing, but apparently the owner of B&F Bottling went to fight in the war, came back and things had been shutdown, or so the story goes.


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## Canadacan

Hey great post!...thanks for the friend request, and great job on FB with your Niagara Dry page! Amazing to see so many variations on the brand, I only have 3 items...two bottles and one can from that brand.
Ps welcome to the forum! we need more Canadians on here sharing their collections


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## NiagaraDryCollector

Canadacan said:


> Hey great post!...thanks for the friend request, and great job on FB with your Niagara Dry page! Amazing to see so many variations on the brand, I only have 3 items...two bottles and one can from that brand.
> Ps welcome to the forum! we need more Canadians on here sharing their collections



Thanks!  I figured I'd toss out some friend requests to any of my fellow Canadian posters. If you know of/have seen posts by Jaroadshow, well that's my uncle! I've seen both him and my father using this forum before, so I figured I'd share my collection with everyone here.

Oh, and if you've ever seen one of two Niagara Dry wanted listings on Kijiji (St. Catharines), that's me. I'm always looking for bottles I don't have, other random products (matchbooks, bottle openers, labels, etc), signs (if the price is right), etc.


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## Eric

Love your collection and great idea for joining Facebook may lead to greater finds for you and pieces your collection.
I'm not on Facebook yet.. do you like it.. I like the idea of not using my real name... I signed up years ago but I received
people wanting to "Friend" me daily that I didn't know... found that a little strange though I think finding other collectors
may be a reason to rethink it. I hear you can join groups with the same interest.
Again nice collection.. I collect a small brand too... the hunt is half the fun.


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## RJ2

I really appreciate a specialist collector who is into the history of their collection. 
Your collection is very nice, I love the cans too. Are any steel?

Ron


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## NiagaraDryCollector

Eric said:


> Love your collection and great idea for joining Facebook may lead to greater finds for you and pieces your collection. I'm not on Facebook yet.. do you like it.. I like the idea of not using my real name... I signed up years ago but I received people wanting to "Friend" me daily that I didn't know... found that a little strange though I think finding other collectors may be a reason to rethink it. I hear you can join groups with the same interest. Again nice collection.. I collect a small brand too... the hunt is half the fun.


  You don't necessarily have to use your real name. You can enter a fake sounding name if you want to. And yeah, you can find and join groups full of people who share the same interest as you too.   





RJ2 said:


> I really appreciate a specialist collector who is into the history of their collection.  Your collection is very nice, I love the cans too. Are any steel?  Ron


  I do believe they are steel cans.  I don't think they would have used aluminum back then.


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## NiagaraDryCollector

Apologies for the double post, but I've just added a rare piece to my collection that some may find very interesting; A Buffalo, New York Niagra-Dry crate. The crate provides a lot of information on the "Niagra-Dry" beverage that was bottled in Buffalo. For example, their slogan was "It's tops", their original phone number was CL 2832, and it would appear the crate is for 30oz bottles. The only problem with that is that I've never seen a 30oz Niagra-Dry bottle.

As well, I think that mark on the inside of the crate that I took a close-up shot of is a manufacturer's mark for who made the crate. The stamp reads Onized Containers, Manufactured by Owens Illinois Glass Company, Fairmont, W. VA, 12 39. I believe "12 39" stands for December 1939.

And for anyone confused by "Niagra-Dry" and "Niagara Dry", I've included a comparison shot of two bottles. The one on the left is "Niagara Dry" Ginger Ale, bottled by Niagara Dry Beverages of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. The one on the right is "Niagra-Dry" Ginger Ale, bottled by B&F Beverages of Buffalo, New York (as seen on the ACL on the backside of the bottle).

About a year ago, I had only heard about Niagra-Dry from Buffalo. Now I have a full and capped bottle with ACL and a standard Canadian Niagara Dry cap (seems they used Canadian caps while skirting around registered trademarks and such with the ACL modification) along with 3 empty Niagra-Dry bottles (all lacking ACL) and a crate.

The crate was found by my father's friend 20+ years ago when he was over in the States. A house was being demolished and the old owner had quite a large bottle and crate collection. Apparently the construction crew sat all the bottles out on the driveway with a sign saying "take what you want", and the crates were planned to be incinerated. Thankfully this crate (among some other various crates I believe) were grabbed by my father's friend and brought back to Ontario, Canada. He actually just remembered he had it a few days ago and managed to dig it out for me.


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## CanadianBottles

Great find!  That's got to be the smallest brand I've ever seen copied, as well as one of the closest knockoffs of another brand from the ACL era.  It's a shame how crates continue to be lost a lot, I have a few pieces of a crate from Penticton that I found being sold as kindling when I was camping out there a few years ago.  I don't come across intact crates from small companies often.


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