My brother and I made our money in the 1980s, in Michigan, collecting bottles on Sunday morning. The teenagers who drank beer did not pick up the empties! Only years later did we realize that the owner of the little store we turned out empties in at thought our parents must be hopeless alcoholics because we two kids had a red wagon of beer bottles every single Sunday morning! Oops! Our poor parents reputation! Edit: I am also so sad that you were so close to where I live, and I didn't have the connections to meet you! Maybe someday!

You were completely correct in singing the Amarillo song the way you did!!! You were singing Is This the Way to Amarillo by Tony Christie. The laugh is on Ned, he didn't know the song. The UK comedian Peter Kay made it famous across the pond. It is a great song that represents my native Texas well. NOCALinTX

It was so much fun seeing you back in California again, Nicola, with Ned and Paige. What fun folks! He truly has an encyclopedic knowledge of old American bottles. Whatever you are doing, keep it up, Nicola, because you appear so relaxed and "twinkly" these days. Glad to see you doing so well!

Amarillo... Song by Tony Christie, you were right Nic

Ned is a real inspiration with his happy attitude! Congrats on finding that mystery Idaho bottle Nicola! Also congratulations to the winner! Hugs!

My gramps used to have a chest freezer for cokes in his gas station. They were a nickle a piece. I can still remember the sound of pulling those bottles.

Nicola, I am an American. I enjoy listening to your pronunciations! Please continue with your pronunciation of bottles. Listening to different pronunciations of English all over the UK has been enjoyable to me in a very RESPECTFUL way. Thanks for all your adventures.

This was a brilliant piece of editing. I loved the history that was recovered with the ubiquitous Coke bottles and the historical pictures. Those ads were really pushing the “wholesomeness” of the product. 😵‍💫 Oh! And Nicola you have a lovely voice!

You’re correct Nicola “Show me the way to Amarillo” by Tony Christie…..actually written by Neil Sedaka 😁😁 great video Nicola…..so glad you came back to the US 🔥🔥🇬🇧🇺🇸

Awesome..that was Fun...i live in Idaho and have one of those bottles..i found it way up on top of a mountain😊😊..enjoy your visit!

You were right with the song, Nicola. There were two songs you both thought of. ‘Show me the way to Amarillo’ and ‘Do you know the way to San Jose’.

When I was 10 my favorite thing to do when I had 10 cents was to go to a gas station in town that had a coke machine. Insert 10 cents then sit on the curb and drink the coke. Hand the empty bottle to the gas station attendant and get 5 cents back. Across the street was the pharmacy where I could get the candy of my choice, usually a Hersheys with almonds, for that bottle return 5 cents. Made for a great day. Of course I didn’t have 10 cents very often! Those were the days!!

As an American who loves Coca-cola I can say that I have learned so much from you and Ned and I have never seen those videos of old advertisement. 🎉

My friends and I collected bottles in some woods across from my apartment development, 1960's. I was 10 or 11 then. We collected them in pillow cases and each bottle was 2 cents deposit money. We took our 4 pillow cases to the grocery store and collected our money. We treated ourselves to pizza. Pizza was a lot cheaper then, lol. Good memories!

The way you say "Bottle" is absolutely charming. love your accent!

In the early 1950s my daddy and his work buddies all had cokes with their blue plate specials at Hamby's. Before they ate, each guy put one dime in the middle of the table. At the end of the meal they turned over their bottles and the one from the farthest away got all the dimes.

I thought Grace Brothers was a department store in Britain. You know, where Mr Humphries, Mrs Slocum and Captain Peacock work.

Nicola, it seems Idaho Beverage is still around. They are now under the banner of Admiral Beverage located in Worland, Wyoming. I wonder if you could reach out to them to find out more about the bottle. I found their website and can send it to you via email if you'd like.

When Ned found the Grace Bros. bottle, how could you not have mentioned "Are You Being Served?"?

You were defenitely right with the song, is this the way to Amarillo Nicola😊, sung by Tony Christie in 1971. I remember it😊.

Leave it to Nicola to find the one bottle that Ned hasn't seen before, people will quit inviting you to their sites if you keep this up!😂 When I worked in grocery stores back in the 90's I would take home any interesting bottles I could find. One day a full 16oz glass bottle of coke came in with a plastic milk jug ring still inside, not your average collectors item but I like oddities like that. I'm glad you had another fun and safe trip across the pond!😊

Nicola, who else could be described as delicious, wholesome and refreshing except for you, yourself! I bet a lot of people will agree with me. Great to see Bottle Ned and the gang! All the best, Janet ♥️

Way into the 80s here in Ohio ,we would go door to door asking if anyone had any soda bottles ,people got to know us pretty well and would have a spot out back and we would collect on Sunday afternoons,we bought tons of candy bars,and soda 🥤 lol ,for years we display this and our little collection grew pretty well ,we were actually able to save up for sting ray bicycles,pretty cool memories 😎

Deposition bottles are still a great thing here in Germany. In a hot summer in the early 2000's I had a student job at a coca-cola distribution warehouse. The alien brand bottles like your 7up and Idaho soda are comming in with the crates full of empty coke bottles. Part of my job back then was to sort out the wrong bottles, so only 100% coke bottles would be send back to the bottling facility.

Great video Nic, loved all the coke footage. When you found the bottle of the day I remembered you did the same digging with Willie and Sarah getting the rare ginger beer bottles. You have a great eye for treasure.

Nicola, I live right across the river from Lewiston, Idaho, and the Idaho beverage company is still in business (I'm 99% sure). I might be able to check it out.😃

2 weeks ago I was metal detecting a lake that got drained and found 2 6 oz Coke bottle one made in Portland Oregon in 1950 and the other was made in Longview Washington in 1951. Both in mint condition. Loved watching you guys digging in this video

Hi Nicola!! Ned is a riot!! isn’t it always the way when you’re showing somebody new a place that you go to to find treasure and the new person gets to find the find of the day!!😂 It gets me how back in the day we thought everybody was so squeaky clean took care of their garbage right and this video really shows that they didn’t. They could’ve melted the glass again. Couldn’t they have been made new bottles out of that glass? It’s nice to see you sound and safely at home again. Now that we’re getting into the winter months, you’ve got a short window of being able to go mud larking. It’s so nice in the summertime where you have that more daylight so you could have a longer day to look for things. I enjoyed watching this very much!! Thanks Nicola and have a great week!!🥰💖 Congratulations to Paulette!!💥💥

Hello there. I live in Boise Idaho. Been to Lewiston. Born and raised here. So happy you found a beverage bottle from Idaho. Love watching your videos.

Hi Nicola, the earliest Coke bottles where called straight side cokes. They had no curve at that time (hence the name straight side and earlier than 1910) and had either a top script or bottom script. If I find mine I will send you a picture lol. Lots of Coke bottles of any older age are collected. Fun video.

22:45 Kingfisher! I love hearing those, but good luck ever photographing them well, haha. So skittish.

Very nice video about the Coke bottles. Congratulations Nicola on finding that beautiful Idaho bottle !!! Ned found some nice ones too !!! Ned is a very good singer 😊 !!! I have an old Coke bottle that I bought from the Goodwill store & it's green 💚 & very heavy but I don't know the year. In the 60's I used to as a young girl go out in my neighborhood & collect Coke bottles & take them to our little store & cash them in & then get a little brown paper bag full of penny candy 🍬🍭 & share with my friends & my two little sisters !!! What fun that was !!! Enjoyed your video so much Nicola !!! ♥️🙂

When you said Amarillo, the only Sony I could think of was the song from 1982 by George Strait., Amarillo By Morning! It's done beautifully and is a great song to dance with a partner to a slow 2 step!...lol You'll have to give it a listen. I enjoyed your hunt. St Louis is about 3 hours south of where I live. My daughter lives close to there now. When I grew up in the 1960s you could turn pop bottles for 5 cents and beer bottles for 3 cents. You could buy a lot of candy back then for 59 cents! A Hershey candy bar was just 5 cents and there were at least 35 varieties of penny candy that now cost what our candy bars did back then!!

As an American, who loves Coca-Cola, and lives in Coca-Cola’s hometown, this was an absolute treat! I’ve learned so much about the history of Coke’s bottling process. I’m over the moon! Congratulations on all of your awesome finds!❤

Wow, thank you Nicola and friends for bringing back some wonderful memories (as you always do 🙂). For me, I found that Coca Cola only tasted "right" when in the clear bottles (with the logo molded in the bottle, as opposed to printed on). I also have memories of the old dispensers, in which you paid your quarter(s) and opened a slim door from which you pulled the bottle of your choice. So cool to see this site.

Gosh, am I glad to see you, Nicola! For some reason, I lost you for some months, but you're back! And you're so right, Tony Orlando & Dawn released the big 70s hit, 'Show me the way to Amarillo' and Burt Bacharach wrote the other, ' Do you know the way to San Jose', sung by Dionne Warwick. We can teach Bottle Ned something after all. My husband & I love to drive our boys nuts by breaking into song when they utter a phrase they think they've invented 🤣

Nicola, try contacting Nez Perce County Historical Society in Lewiston, Idaho about your bottle. I bet they have information on the company that made that beverage.

Nicola...you were right...”is this the way to Amarillo”......he was thinking of....”do you know the way to San Jose”🤩

How lovely to see more enthusiastic and knowledgeable mudlarkers bringing us another corner of forgotten history! Trust you to get the best find of the day! Congratulations all though on some wonderful finds.

Another great video Nicola, I enjoyed it very much. Nice bottles found, I hope you had a wonderful time in the United States. Have a fantastic week ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💜

Nicola, You might try Under the Plains, Tom, for a possible Idaho bottle lead.😊❤

Some of the most comprehensive Coke info - original ads - Ned's Knowledge - Page - Jan and of course Nicola - Very Interesting

"Grace Brothers" just makes me think of Are You Being Served? 😆

When I was a child, our local Coca Cola bottler had their machines behind a huge plate glass window. We would sit outside and watch the bottles fly by. Thanks for reminding me of that memory.

What fun! Thank you for the bottling histories, it cracks me up that Coke called their syrup "wholesome". Ned is probably too young to remember either of those songs,. :-)

Great video. I enjoyed the fact that you included vintage ads and manufacturing footage. I was born and raised in NY State. Grew up in the 50's and 60's. Bottle deposits didn't begin in this State until 1982. As a kid, I drank Coke, Pepsi, and Orange Crush in the original amber bottle. Back then, Orange Crush contained orange pulp. The Fanta produced in Europe contains pulp I believe. It's missing in the Fanta here. Nehi Beverages, which still exists today, was around when I was a kid. My favorite flavor of "pop" back then was wild cherry. Living in Rochester, NY, we called soda "pop." When I moved 3 hours away, I had to learn to call "pop", soda.

Hi Nicola, what great finds. I never knew the city was on the bottom of the bottles. When we were young, our mom only let us have 1 glass of soda on Saturday with lunch. It was usually from a company called Mother's Pride. It came in a half gallon jug glass bottle. It would be great to find one of those bottles. Thanks again, enjoy your day.

Great video Nicola! The vintage video @ 31:49 sounded and looked familiar to me. So i tried to look for it, and I was right! It's from the Philippines. The background sound is a local folksong called Paru-parong Bukid (Eng. trans : Field Butterfly). I learned more about Coke from back in the day with this vintage video from my country.

I live nearby in Stockton CA, and we still used returnable Coke bottles well into the late 80s or possibly even the early 90s. They were huge compared to the ones you were finding. Digging up old soda bottles is just about one of my favorite things to do. Thanks for making this video!

I am in my 76 yr. When I was 12 years old, I worked in a sweet shop and really, really enjoyed Fling! It was cheaper than the other brands but much more delicious. Lemonyish. It came in a big bottle.

i remember scrounging deposit bottles as a kid back in the 70s to come up with money for our family vacation. brings back a lot of happy memories from vacation. congrats paullette!

I enjoyed your coke bottle outing. I have occasionally found obscure brand soda bottles in an old farm dump. The oddest one was Marlboro which is a better known name cigarette brand. Turns out it was a short lived soda brand in the 1940s!

You were right about the Amarillo song! Great song and sung very well.

Nicola - you have a nice voice - enjoyed yr singing to us.

Who remembers cork lined caps? Im old enough to remember what they looked like.

Hi Nicola, i remember that back in 1971 Tony Christie had a hit with that song 😊 ( Is this the way to Amarillo) 😍Oh yes back in the days.

Thank you my friend for another insight into other times and other places. Thank you too for simply being you - our lives are the richer for your presence .

Darling River Goddess, all the water ways on earth are connected. You are recognized where ever you go by the waters of earth. This was great fun. The old advertisements were a memory for this old person, that took me right back. So proud that America joined The British and French in delivering the world from the Hitler and World War II. 🇬🇧🇺🇸 💖

Even though Coca-Cola has been marketed world wide for generations, Coke is genuine Americana. As a kid, in the fifties, being treated to a bottle of Coke was a big deal. I appreciate the Coca-Cola footage you added; while I no longer drink (soda, pop or soft drinks), I love the history. And, as always, I love your uploads. P.S. I suspect the odds of finding another Idaho bottle would be greatly increased in Idaho. LOL

Thanks. Very cool! I lived on a few islands in the Pacific and frequently found Coke bottles while diving or hiking. On Kwajalein, a WW2 battle scene in the Marshall Islands, you could find them while diving in the lagoon. Typical date on those bottles was 1943. On Saipan, in the Marianas Islands, another WW2 battle area, the bottles were dated 1944 and beyond, as the US invaded in June of 1944. You might expect the bottles to have some value but they might fetch only a few dollars on Ebay, last time I checked. I did find colorless bottles occasionally but don't recall the dates on those. I assumed they were clear because of a wartime shortage of whatever chemical was used to make Coke bottles green. Cheers!

What a treat, took 30 mins in for me to realize I know that canal, having lived there on a sailboat, in the 1970s. Didn't know about the Coca Cola connection but I do remember lots of tennis balls floating out to the bay after big storms. Guess there was a racket club upstream back then. We would fish them out for my ball-crazed dog. Congrats on the fun find!

Hello Bottle Ned. I never have seen one of those early coke bottles before. Very interesting video, I love including the birds. Wow, Santa Maria, CA, 20 mile north of me!

My husband used to collect Coca Cola bottles. He had about 11 bottles, all collectable. After he passed away I gave the bottles to a family friend who helped my son and I move.

I see San Francisco! Welcome!

An interesting trip to the United States, California bottling location. Really rare finds. Hopefully, you’ll go back again. Glad to see you again, and see you on the next, Nicola. Cheers ma’am! 🇬🇧🙂👍🇺🇸

Love how you emphasize and love the imprints in mud your finds make and showing them to us 💞👊

Lovely to see, Ned, Page and Jan loved the old clips of the story behind coke bottles. Well done for getting the best bottle of the day, the markings on the art deco bottle were very nice and good to hear all the info. On the names on the base of the bottles, looked a good day

Fabulous film Nicola, what great guy Bottle Ned is. As always, unusually and absolutely facinating stuff....thanks for taking us along.

Congratulations to you Nicola 🙂

I love seeing this Americana Brit symbiosis and mutual friendship. You do have a magic touch it seems!

I'm watching this from Lincoln, Nebraska. I enjoyed the broken local bottle. Thanks!

I'm American and love the way you say "bottle"!! It's my favorite word to hear you say!

Thank you for the video and bringing us along on your trip to California to meet Bottle Ned and gang.

Excellent video Nicola! I love the old adverts, so funny but such lies they told back then....Coke is pure and wholesome?!!! Good to see Ned and Paige again and yes I knew the 'Amarillo' song you mentioned which will now stay in my head all day 😂💖x

What an education! I never knew that much about Coke bottling. Loved the Coke advertising films! And Nicola had to come to our country to enlighten us all.

You're here! You're here! Welcome to Marin! Mudlarking in SR canal. Waving from Novato!!!😂

😂 I love the song at the end. 👏👏 And you singing, you can sing. 👏👏 You guys are such a hoot. The bottle competition is on!! 😂

The bottle is really interesting! It always amazes me that so many intact bottles are found!

The art deco bottle you found was made near where I live in Idaho so that was an especially interesting find. Great video! Thanks, Nicola!

It was unfair of them to tease you about the song. “Is this the way to Amarillo” is definitely a hit song. Apparently not as big in the US as it was in the UK.

Nicola always has the best luck, and I’m convinced it’s because she is the nicest person!!

Nicola, you were correct with the song, "Show me the way to Amarillo." The deposit collected for bottles were 2 cents for soda bottles and 5 cents for quart size. We called them tonic bottles in Massachusetts.

Liked Nicola Beverages. Intoxicating!

What a pleasant and knowledgeable man-he could get me addicted ! His glass bottling info is fascinating

Such wonderful history behind the old coke bottle. It reminds me of my early years in the 70's, (I was born in '68) having fish and chips on the beach with my beloved parents. Happy days. Thank you Nicola xx Teresa ❤🇦🇺. P.S. I like the way you say bottle, so it's all good xx t

gotta love the competitive nature we yanks possess. brits are so supportive & complimentary…truly gracious. not us! we’re like a rowdy bunch of 12-yr-old boys trying to outdo each other!

Over 1400 American cities bottled Coca-Cola. I love it when you find them on the Thames.. what stories they could tell❤❤

Wonderful friends having a good time.

You’re more correct with the Amarillo song. “(Is this the way to) Amarillo” was written by Neil Sedaka and was a hit for Tony Christie in 1972. Peter Kay did a comedy cover of it in 2005. “Do you know the way to San Jose” is a Burt Bacharach and Hal David song that was first a hit for Dionne Warwick.

So Cool you came to California to visit Bottle-Neck-Ned 😅 One of your Best video Of all !!

In the 1950’s I collected both soda & beer bottles turning them in for the deposit and averaged $10/week. I was rich. Bought my own bicycle & push reel mower….thus paper route & lawn jobs. The rest is history!

Bottle Ned certainly knows how to make an outing like that fun. Well done all around.

The Coca-cola bottle,so iconic that one can easily forget all the minute changes to its design over the years. The Idaho bottle,surely,it contained potato soda,enhanced aesthetically by a variety of artificial colors and flavors(colours and flavours?)

3:01 send Nicola and all the animals will come... Another absolutely fascinating episode btw 👍

When I was a young kid in the early 1970s the bottle deposit was a whole 5¢. Everything was glass, from single serving bottles in machines where you pulled the bottle out, to 32oz bottles that could be bought in packs of 6 in a reusable plastic carton with a handle. 2 liter plastic showed up in Texas right around I think 1980. For a short time there were even 3 liter bottles, but they were too much to handle. Those old glass bottles were tough. It would be possible to make a machine that could wash and fill and cap with any number of drinks into simpler modern glass bottles. Maybe someday.

Super trouval cool top😊

What a Brilliant piece of history. I've said it before, I always learn something new from your videos! Many thanks.❤ UK.

The last bottling video is from the Philippines. The background music is a prewar (and until now) kundiman (native music) which you can check on the internet or ask your Filipino friend to listen to it. Wonderful.

There is also a country song callrd "Amarillo By Morning" by George Strait. I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it yet.

I loved watching this video. I’m actually from Idaho. I grew up in Arco, Idaho the first city in the world to be lit by atomic power. Also something rare and exotic. Congratulations on finding your beautiful Idaho bottle. Well done!