Beer bottle cap FAQ list

• Which kind of bottle caps do you collect?
• How can I start a cap collection?
• How do you lift off the caps without damaging them?
• How do you store your caps?
• How did you scan the images?
• What's the best way to send caps in the mail?

Which kind of bottle caps do you collect?

I collect any kind of cap that has been on a beer bottle or was intended to be on a beer bottle. That includes crown caps and plastic caps, lift-off and twist-off caps, used and unused caps. I want one piece of each cap in my collection, but I don't consider caps whith different edges or backs as different. I started collecting beer bottle caps in 1995 and I have about 3200 caps now.

How can I start a cap collection?

The most obvious way is to keep the caps from the bottles you drink. OK, you probably won't be thirsty enough to get a collection of several thousand caps within a short time. The next step is to look in bars and restaurants, where you often find a can where the caps are dumped after the bottles are opened. Or you can ask somebody who works in a bar/restaurant to keep the caps for you. You'll soon get a considerable stock of caps that are common in the area you live. That's when you can start looking for trading partners all over the world (the bottle cap section in the Open Directory is a good starting point) and your collection will grow very quickly.

How do you lift off the caps without damaging them?

With twist off caps there should be no problems. If you have to twist so hard that it would hurt your hand, then take a piece of cloth between the cap and your hand.
Caps which require an opener are more tricky. It's difficult not to bend them with the opener. Generally, an opener with a longer distance between the point where it touches the top of the cap and the point where it lifts up the rim does less damage. When you put a coin on the top while opening, the top gets less bent, but the rim gets more bent. Scratches or very small opener marks can be avoided by putting a piece of cardbord between the cap and the opener
Personally, I prefer a totally different method: I put the rim of the cap on the edge of a table and then hit firmly on the cap with my flat hand. This is by far the best way to get an undamaged cap. (Well, you probably will scratch the table, break the bottle, or hurt your hand, but a real collector doesn't mind :-).)

How do you store your caps?

A part of the collection is stored in a chest of drawers. Each drawer consists of a board on which the caps are separated by plastic crosses that prevent them from sliding around.
The rest of the collection is put into plastic folders that were originally designed for negative strips of photographs. I put the caps on black paper strips, so I can easily put them in the folder and take them out again. Up to four caps fit on a strip (five, if I stuff them closely enough), and a page can hold eight strips. About ten pages fit in an organizer, and at the moment, I have eighteen organizers on my bookshelf.

How did you scan the images?

I have just a small handheld scanner. Before scanning, I put the caps into a frame of several layers of cardboard that is just as thick as the cap. So I can roll the scanner over the caps as if they were flat. I have also a flatbed scanner, but it doesn't produce better results. The problem with bottle caps is that most of the images are either too glaring or too dark, because I can't control the angle of the light. I made experiments with a cheap digital camera (a webcam), but the results were worse than with a scanner. And digital cameras that produce acceptable results are still very expensive.

What's the best way to send caps in the mail?

To my experience, the best way for mailing caps is putting them between two sheets of plastic (thick paper might also work), which are stapled together so that the caps can't slide around and won't scratch each other. This has also the advantage that you can put them in an envelope and you don't have to make a parcel.

If your question hasn't been answered yet, you can ask me by e-mail at beercap@gmx.net.