In December, 1936 of the breweries in California that sold beer in cans, El Rey Brewing was among the smaller ones with sales only ahead of Grace Brothers Los Angeles, Globe Brewing of San Francisco, and Salinas Brewing.
       El Rey Beer cans have been located in a number of "finds" including outside California and are only moderately scarce in on grade condition. One of the largest individual "finds" of on grade examples were 8 tarnish free examples in c1/1+ conditions that had been found by a woman in Anaconda, Montana who sold them for $5. each in 1972 to BCCA members Bob Myers and Bob McClure.
       In the late 1930's, typically only a small portion of a brewery's beer was canned. As an example of the numbers of cans produced by a small-sized brewery, in the 1970's Don Schmitz (an active San Jose collector of Coca Cola collectibles) said he heard from a former employee that over 4 million cans of El Rey Beer were filled.  Even if there are 50, or more?, on-grade El Rey beer cones still around, this number is still quite a small percentage of the total number of cones that were originally filled. Rarity at this level, or often greater, is typical of most cans from "local" breweries operating in the 1930's.         
        "Eagle" as a brand has been prominently associated with the American brewing industry with at least ten breweries being named "Eagle"; and the bird has been featured in the breweriana from many more breweries. 
        The pictured grade 1 Eagle example from Albion Brewing (the Eagle cone with the solid blue banner at the front of the can has the Albion Brewing name on the side) was seen in Joe Veselsky's collection as early as September, 1970, and could be the only on-grade example known so far. After Wally Gilbert purchased Joe Veselsky's collection in September, 1975, Wally held the Eagle by Albion for nearly 30 years. 
        Among the off-grade Eagle cans that have been found, around 2002, 5-6 Eagle-by-Albion cans were reportedly dumped in the Grass Valley, Calif. area.  Also a dozen or more of another Eagle cone variation, "withdrawn free", reportedly were found off Highway 50 in the Sierra.

        Gold Age Beer cone examples by El Rey Brewing have only been found in limited numbers.  Very few beer cans have documentation on the holders/circumstances that allowed a can to be preserved fully going back over 70 years or more.  However, such records do exist for a Gold Age Beer cone - another example than the one pictured above in the El Rey group.  Dan Baker (BCCA Member #2048) through his contacts, found a Gold Age cone in 2014 that likely has one of the best provenances for any beer can.  The granddaughter-in-law of the original purchasers helpfully wrote the 4/27/14 letter below describing well her relatives moving to California from Nebraska after 1929 and adding some background on following years.  While in California, they brought a Gold Age Beer "to share".  The empty cone was kept in the family until 2014, serving as a "testament to their marriage" and was displayed on the relatives' Anniversary Day.  

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• Lucky Ale, green/gold, with opening directions.
• Lucky Ale, grey/red ---Among the larger on-grade "finds" of any of these five labels may be the three c1+ grey/red Lucky Ales found during the renovation of the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco around 1974 and picked up by Bob Myers via a newspaper ad. 
• Bankers Ale, this label is very scarce with a fragile metallic label. A much more common and different label design was used in the later 1950's and early 1960's.
• Frisco with opening directions. (There are two other variations of Frisco, and cans with no opening directions were found in moderate numbers, such as a group Glenn Hintz located in Randsburg, Calif. in the late 1970s.)
• Lisco Beer: Around 1940 General Brewing sold Lisco Beer in a flat top can. Warren Hardaker thought he was the first collector to find Lisco Beer in a flat top, and did at a surface dump near Lake Pillsbury in the early 1980s. However, Warren said that at first the can was only one of a group of heavily rusted cans he gathered and didn’t ID the Lisco flat top can until cleaning it at home. That can is pictured in the Class Book - “Late Additions” on page 46 at end of “12oz flat tops.” Per information from Pat Franco, in the later 1980s Hal Noehren found “around a case of Lisco flats” in a pit near Columbia. The better examples from this group are in good grade 2 shape, and unusually, the gold side-panels sometimes are largely preserved with just scattered “bubble” rust spots. Oddly for the timing, not long after another small group of Lisco flats was reportedly found in an Alturas area pit dump.
• Glory B, as a brand in cans became known to collectors in early 1976 when Don Babcock and Larr Smurthwaite found a number in a dump off Skyline Drive, that goes south thru San Mateo County.  As Don described, “13 were found but more than half were not whole cans, mostly rust.”
  
      Not long after that "Skyline find", when Ken Ostrow was attending glass blowing school in Oakland, he found two grade 1-ish examples under a building at Point Reyes Station. These cans were part of a find having around 200 1930's cans that Ken located through a lead he made at the Marin Flea Market. 
      As described by Ken in 2010, the cans were under a former loading dock of a building that over the years had had a number of additions that surrounded the dock area, and by the 1970's, contained many artists' studios. Access to the former loading dock area was hidden behind a wall of a studio, which made for a "find" that was one of the more interesting ones to locate.  
      Of the over 200 cans, the two Glory B's were the best cans; among other brands were Willow's; many Rainier cones; Alta's and four types of Gold Medal cans from Grace Bros. Ken traded the better Glory B can to Bob Myers.
      Other on-grade Glory B examples located so far have been very limited, such as the grade 1 example that is pictured.  This Glory B was once part of a small, collection in Nebraska assembled by an "original collector", i.e., active in the 1930's, who likely bought the can during a trip to Calif. He had kept it in his barber shop display until the late 1970's when the collection was found by Breweriana "picker" Harold Mann who traded cans for the Glory B and several other rarer cans.
      Outside of these limited "finds" of Glory B cans, Rusty Buncher #1 Warren Hardaker doesn't know of many other Glory B cans that have been dug - and he rates Glory B as one of the rarer cans to find in California.
   
      ----"Glory B" - what could be the origin of the name?  Lucky specialist Pat Franco has wondered on the name and hasn't seen any background on the subject during his extensive review of the brewery's materials. Ed Scoglietti thinks the name might have been picked as those words were a "saying" of the 1930's. 
      A more speculative guess is that somebody at the Brewery wanted to make what they thought was a clever connection to "General Brewing" using the "G" and "B" in the Glory B name.  Given so few examples have even been dug, Glory B must have been a very limited issue and a brand failure by General Brewing. As has happened before, highly individualistic brand names often end up having only limited demand by beer drinkers, which leads to rarer cans decades later for collectors.  
             
              *The red/green Lucky Ale "Christmas" can:
          A General Brewing can which may have originated in the late 1930's. As of 2010 this ale label hasn't been dumped, and likely was some type of test can that apparently wasn't filled with beer and sold to the public.  As related to Pat Franco, Wally Gilbert said he got the can from early 1970's collector Ken Jerue who told collectors he got it from a brewery employee at the Azusa plant who had found it in the office and didn't think it had been filled. Wally Gilbert bought this can around 1977 as part of the Ken Jerue collection, and later sold it in the 1980's to Dave Stark.

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