Antique Starr "X" Bottle Opener

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I'm not a huge fan of antiques in general, but there are times when certain items do catch my interest. After my wife and I moved into our new house, I decided that I wanted to mount a stationary bottle opener somewhere in our kitchen.

After researching these for a while, I remembered all of the old, classic Coca Cola bottle openers that I used to see mounted in stores near the coolers --- I remember them from the 1980s while growing up and would see in a store whenever I would get a glass coke bottle to drink. Maybe this is a southern thing -- I have no idea if this was prevelant elsewhere. Anyway, I decided I wanted one.

Having done a little research, I came across this post at Coca Cola Collectors, a blog about what you think it's about.

An original Coca-Cola bottle opener would have the “STARR X” logo with “Brown Co” written on the front. According to Brown Manufacturing Company, producers of the bottle openers, the first ‘Drink Coca-Cola’ STARR “X” bottle openers started to appear around 1929. Around this time, the ‘Coca-Cola’ STARR bottle opener evolved to the Starr “X” design.

Thomas C. Hamilton, a citizen of Boston, Massachusetts, filed for a patent on September 18, 1924 for a Bottle Cap Puller. The patent, 1,534,211, was issued on April 21, 1925. In 1943, certain modifications were made to the patent allowing a new patent for #2,333,088 to be issued to Raymond Brown, the owner of Brown Mfg. Company. Prior to the early 1970’s, all bottle openers were cast in various foundries throughout the USA. Since then and until December 31, 2006, all ‘Drink Coca-Cola’ STARR “X” bottle openers have been cast at the Brown foundry in Germany.

The site goes on to say there are two versions of this opener. Both versions look like this on the front:

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All Starr "X" openers look like this on the front, with the only difference being the patent number it lists. All openers made after 1943 will have the newer patent number.

The other difference is on the back. Any opener made between 1929 - the early 1970s would say "Made in the USA". This meant it was molded at any of the foundries throughout the USA that the Brown Co. used. Starting in the 70's, the Brown Manufacturing Company shifted their foundry to West Germany. Any openers made from the early 1970s - 1991 say "Made in W. Germany". Finally, any that say "Made in Germany" were built from 1991 - 2006.

As best I can tell, the Brown Manufacturing Company stopped making these bottle openers in-house in 2006 and now outsources their construction to various other companies, mostly in China. From online reviews, their quality doesn't compare to the vintage openers.

After scouring Ebay for a few days last Novemeber, I managed to win an auction for a vintage Starr "X" opener that was made in West Germany (so in between 1970 - 1991) still in the original box with the original screws. Tonight I finally decided where in our kitchen I wanted to mount it and did so. I'm quite happy with how well it mounted -- it feels very sturdy.

Below are a few more pictures of the box and the opener, mounted.

How a secret government sweetheart deal for Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder wrecked a great park ranger’s career.

Tim Murphy writing for the Washington Monthly writes:

The second is the settling last fall by the National Park Service (NPS) of a whistleblower complaint over a secret sweetheart deal Snyder extracted nine years ago to give his Maryland home an unobstructed view of the Potomac River. It was a small concession in the grand scheme of things, the kind that the rich and powerful frequently wheedle out of government, especially back then, during the presidency of George W. Bush, when such favors were flowing like booze in a skybox. But its discovery set off a decade-long campaign of bureaucratic retribution over two administrations that nearly sent an innocent man to prison. The story of that little favor wonderfully (if depressingly) encapsulates the essential character of our times, in which average people who play by the rules are made to suffer by the blithe manipulation of those rules by the people at the top.

This was the shit the Obama administrationw as supposed to put a stop to. From 2007 - 2008 I worked for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. NFWF is a non-profit who's charter was established by Congress and its board is appointed by the Secretary of Interior. Given that I started working there in the final year of the Bush administration, I saw what a supposed environmentally conscience non-profit can do when most of its board was made up on Bush loyal Republicans after 7 years of appointments. Money cut from Humpback Whale conservation grants but new money pumped into Wal-mart sponsored grants and tons of marketing resources directed to press conferences and ads co-opted by Wal-mart. I left NFWF after one year disgusted at the Republicans that ran the organization, but thought that the incoming Obama admin would change things.

The same two people that ran NFWF in 2007 still run it.

10 Years On Mars

Two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on the Red Planet in January, 2004, on a 90-day mission. Spirit's mission lasted 2,269 days (over 6 years) and ended in 2010. Ten years after landing, the Opportunity rover continues to explore.

From the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

Two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on the Red Planet in January, 2004, on a 90-day mission. Spirit's mission lasted 2,269 days (over 6 years) and ended in 2010. Ten years after landing, the Opportunity rover continues to explore. The rover's science team explains how Opportunity traversed the Red Planet, examined the diverse environment and sent back data that transformed our understanding of Mars.

What Hard Drive Should I Buy?

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Brian Beach, at the Backblaze Blog writes:

My last two blog posts were about expected drive lifetimes and drive reliability. These posts were an outgrowth of the careful work that we’ve done at Backblaze to find the most cost-effective disk drives. Running a truly unlimited online backup service for only $5 per month means our cloud storage needs to be very efficient and we need to quickly figure out which drives work.

Because Backblaze has a history of openness, many readers expected more details in my previous posts. They asked what drive models work best and which last the longest. Given our experience with over 25,000 drives, they asked which ones are good enough that we would buy them again. In this post, I’ll answer those questions.

Good data.

Enemies Of The Poor

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Paul Krugman, at The New York Times writes:

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are doing all they can to hurt the poor, and they would have inflicted vast additional harm if they had won the 2012 election. Moreover, G.O.P. harshness toward the less fortunate isn’t just a matter of spite (although that’s part of it); it’s deeply rooted in the party’s ideology, which is why recent speeches by leading Republicans declaring that they do too care about the poor have been almost completely devoid of policy specifics. Let’s start with the recent Republican track record. Krugman does a good job of calling the GOP on their recent bullshit campaign to claim they care about the less fortunate.

"Rivalry Among U.S. Mobile Operators Has Wall Street Worried That The Industry's Profits Could Seriously Decline"

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Sinead Carew, of Reuters writes:

After months of aggressive moves by T-Mobile US to lure customers from other carriers, No. 2 operator AT&T Inc counter-attacked on January 3 by offering to pay consumers to switch from T-Mobile. Days later, No. 3 ranked Sprint Corp promised big discounts for family and friend groups. On Wednesday, T-Mobile upped the ante, saying it would pay hefty exit costs for converts. The moves by Sprint and AT&T come after No. 4 U.S. operator T-Mobile, a long-time industry straggler, was able to report three full quarters of customer growth after four years of losses. While discounts are always welcomed by consumers, the intensifying competition is a new challenge to a U.S. industry long used to imposing its will on consumers, and analysts fear it could result in the loss of billions of dollars of revenue. How sad is it that articles such as this are able to be written? Do you mean to say that due to actual competition between the wireless carriers for the first time in years that their record profits are at risk of declining? Ridiculous. Furthermore, how sad is it that Ms. Carew is able to write an article like this couched around the idea that Wall Street is concerned, yet very little mention about how this could be a massive benefit to customers.