Bottle top, 'Coca-Cola'

This collection of about 250 bottle tops was collated by Toby Stevenson when he was aged 7 - 11 years old, between 1965 - 1969. Toby recalls his interest was sparked by two Queen Elizabeth II coronation bottle tops that had been kept by his grandmother. She gave them to him and he proceeded to collect bottle tops wherever he could. He found examples on the ground, he asked dairies for their discarded caps, he requested contributions from family friends who had come to visit and he acquired some from a pen friend living in Queensland Australia.

Toby was an active, opportunistic and obsessive collector. He aimed to acquire complete sets of examples made by each brand and he would replace old or damaged examples with brighter, less damaged ones. Even after he stopped collecting a special top was occasionally added to the collection. One such example is a commonwealth games top from 1974.

Each bottle top has a different logo printed on it. Some of the brands include: Bottled Lane's Sunshine, Tui, Innes Lemon Paeroa Tartan, Frostee, Fru tee, DB and Kola. The bottle tops are also an important snapshot of the soft drink bottling industry in New Zealand in the 1960s, much of which occurred in small towns as well as cities throughout the country.