I don’t know much about hockey or my city’s team the Philadelphia Flyers. But when I saw two long rows of Canada Dry soda cans with the team’s winged symbol on a shelf at the auction house, I was intrigued enough to check them out.
These opened and empty 12-ounce cans were obviously someone’s collection, and the auction house had lined them up nicely to appeal to any hockey or sports fan. Sports memorabilia sells, and it wouldn’t take much to get this arrangement noticed.
On each can was the face of a Flyers player from the team’s 1974-1975 Stanley Cup championship. There were more than 25 cans, and I didn’t look closely enough to see if there were duplicates. Some of the names included Terry Crisp, Mel Bridgman, Rick MacLeish, Orest Kindrachuk, Dave Schultz.
This was the second win for the Flyers, who had beat the Boston Bruins the year before. Playing as the Broad Street Bullies, they beat the Bruins four games to two in the best-of-seven series in 1974. They had come out of the expansion of the National Hockey League in 1967, and were the first of that lot to win the Cup. The league had increased the number of teams by six during the 1967-68 season, its first change in 25 years.
In the 1974-75 season, they won four games to two against the Buffalo Sabres. Game three was labeled the Fog Game because it was played in fog produced by heat inside the un-airconditioned stadium.
Canada Dry issued the cans featuring 21 players in 1975, followed by another set in 1979. The soft-drink company produced similar cans for the 1975 Philadelphia Phillies and the 1976-77 Sixers with Julius Erving, according to usasoda.com.
I wasn’t around when the cans sold, but I did check prices later on the web. I found a few single cans selling for $9.99 each on amazon.com. Then I found a set of 57 cans at auction for $200 in February, but they did not sell. A set of 21 sold for $150 three years ago. That same auction site sold an uncut metal sheet of the 21 Stanley Cup cans for $150. Now, that was unusual and worth a buy.
I found 10 cans from one person’s collection featured in the Can Museum, where you can search for all kinds of cans uploaded by members, display your collection or trade cans with people all over the world.
