Lots of soda and beer bottles of the 1870s and up were marked "NOT TO BE
SOLD" or "Property of XYZ" so that they could be returned and
refilled.  What better way to advertise than to have your company name
embossed on a stout little bottle that had many lives and traveled far and
wide.
         Dan W.

At 10:57 AM 3/21/02, you wrote:
>"NO DEPOSIT NO RETURN, NOT TO BE REFILLED," according to some ancient notes
>I have, first appeared in 1939.  The source of this information, if it is
>to be trusted, is:
>
>Kroll, Wayne L.
>   1976  Badger Breweries, Past and Present. Wayne L. Kroll, Jefferson,
>Wisconsin.
>
>
>Other, probably more reliable notes along the same line from Jane Busch's
>1987 paper in Historical Archaeology suggest it might appear as early as
>1935. Take your pick.
>
>I've analysed the collections of a couple of saloons, and scrutinized
>carefully the collections of three others, all dating from the first two
>decades of the twentieth century. I'll vouch for the fact that whole
>bottles are extremely rare. Almost all of the bottles were broken,
>suggesting that the whole bottles were recycled, like Jane hypothesized in
>her article.