🍸 Vintage NOS Kar’s Tom Collins Mixer Cork Bottle Cap 1940s 1950s Detroit MI for sale

Kar's Tom Collins Mixer Cork Bottle Cap — Detroit, Michigan

Size: 1.25 inches ~ New Old Stock (NOS), unused and uncrimped, with the original cork liner still inside.

Go ask around 1874 whether anyone had seen a man named Tom Collins, and half the bar would swear he'd just stepped out. He never existed — the whole thing was a newspaper hoax that got so big it stuck itself to a real drink, gin, lemon, sugar and soda water, and the name never came off. This cap is what capped the bottle that did half that mixing for you, straight off the shelf.

The cap itself

It's never been crimped onto a bottle — the skirt still flares open the way it left the factory, and the pressed-cork liner underneath, the seal every bottler used before plastic, is still in place. Kar's is lettered in silver on a black band up top, TOM COLLINS MIXER runs in green across a silver panel below it, and a line of small type runs around the skirt, the part you can read saying "...tling Co. Detroit."

Detroit's John Kar Bottling Co.

John Kar was already running a saloon in Delray by 1909, and in 1922 he bought out the A. R. Andrews and Son Bottling Works on West Jefferson and started putting his own name on pop. Delray was Detroit's Hungarian pocket down by the river, Hungarian, Slovak and Polish families all mixed in, so a good chunk of Kar's advertising ran in Hungarian — Kar János és Fiai, "John Kar & Sons." Alongside his own line he also bottled O-So, one of Michigan's favorite sodas, in everything from cream soda and cherry to Rock and Rye.

People who were around still talk about the place — the smell of bleach and sugar water drifting off the plant, kids getting paid in bottles of pop for running errands, and older folks swearing the workers used to fish right out the back window on a slow afternoon. John Kar died in 1951, his son Ed kept the bottles rolling, and the business finally closed in the early 1990s under later owners. Delray itself thinned out fast after the 1967 riots, as the families who'd built the neighborhood moved Downriver to Allen Park, Lincoln Park and Wyandotte.

Why "Tom Collins"

The Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874 was pure mischief — you'd ask a friend if he'd seen Tom Collins, and when he said no, you'd tell him Tom had just been talking about him around the corner. Newspapers ran fake sightings, music halls wrote him into songs, and by 1882 Harry Johnson's bartender's manual had the drink itself in print. A bottled mixer like this one bottled the lemon and soda side of it together, so all a fella had to add at home was the gin.

Specifications

Brand: Kar's
Maker/Packer: John Kar Bottling Co., Detroit, Michigan
Place: Detroit, Michigan
Era: 1940s–1950s
Material: Lithographed tin crown cap with pressed-cork liner
Condition: New Old Stock (NOS), unused and uncrimped, original cork liner intact

🍸 Vintage NOS Kar’s Tom Collins Mixer Cork Bottle Cap 1940s 1950s Detroit MI for sale

🍸 Vintage NOS Kar’s Tom Collins Mixer Cork Bottle Cap 1940s 1950s Detroit MI:
$6.95

Classic Cars For Sale

🍸 Vintage NOS Kar’s Tom Collins Mixer Cork Bottle Cap 1940s 1950s Detroit MI for sale

🍸 Vintage NOS Kar’s Tom Collins Mixer Cork Bottle Cap 1940s 1950s Detroit MI: $6.95

Classic Cars For Sale

🍸 Vintage NOS Kar’s Tom Collins Mixer Cork Bottle Cap 1940s 1950s Detroit MI:
$6.95