Very Cheap, Second Hand Beer Bottles

Here’s something that will make collectors of Oshkosh memorabilia wince. It’s a classified ad from the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern of September 9, 1893.

Frank Kitz had just closed up his beer bottling plant when he placed that ad. His bottle house was at the northwest corner of what is now Parkway and Monroe.

Here’s the thing: those “Very cheap, second hand beer bottles” Kitz was selling are now extremely rare. And highly sought after. Only a handful of Kitz bottles are known to have survived. Today, they're worth about $500 a piece.

There’s more on Oshkosh’s beer bottlers, here and here. And I recently wrote a long piece about Frank Kitz and his son Theodore. You can find that here.