Monarch Brewing of Los Angeles, operating until 1942, had at least seven brands with colorful, highly collectible labels and was located just a few blocks west on Main St. from the Eastside Brewery. The Calif. Brewers Association production records showed that as of December, 1936, "Balboa Brewing" was ranked 18th ranked out of around 34 breweries in Calif., just ahead of St. Claire Brewing. Then in 1937 "Balboa" had a name change to "Monarch Brewing".
Most of the Monarch Brewing brands are rare in on-grade condition with the four rarest possibly being Finer Flavor Ale, Palomar, Town House, and Chief - though Palomar has turned up in pits along with Coronado, Balboa, Brownie, and Finer Flavor Beer around Southern Calif. and in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains.
Two of the rarest, Finer Flavor Ale and Town House, were in the Clovis, Calif. collection.
For Brownie, a few on-grade examples have been found in scattered locations: Gene DiCicco bought one at a flea market in Reno during the "Hot August Nights" in the 1980's and the seller also had a second clean example. Gene located another Brownie in Long Beach and helpfully passed on the lead to a Southern Calif. collector who bought the can for around $450. For other on-grade examples, the original collector who found the green Brown Derby also had Coronado and Brownie.
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As an example of the limited on-grade and "under-the-house" condition examples that are known for one of rarer brands, Chief: Bob Myers through a newspaper ad in 1970 made contact with a man who had found 5 Chief cans, grade 1-/2+, under a house a few blocks off a Southern Calif. freeway. Several of these Chiefs turned out to have fragile labels and much of the red color on one of the Chiefs was washed off with a simple rinsing. One each of these Chiefs went in trade to John Ahrens, Wally Gilbert and John Thimios. In 1987, a San Francisco collector located a mostly 1/1+ example that had been found in a building in a Southern Calif. city and was sold to Gene DiCicco; a less than grade 1 example turned up on ebay around 2003-4 that was part of a small beer can collection assembled by a long time flea market searcher/seller in the San Diego area.
Dan Andrews for the August, 1994 BCCA magazine wrote a detailed article on Monarch Brewing, helped by contacting the wife of a former employee. Marc Tracy, a specialist on Crown Can Company cans, has found the hazy subject of which can company manufactured the Monarch cans, "a puzzle." Two brands, Chief and Brownie, have very small notations, "Crown Can 1-37" at the lower seam (the 2nd picture has a "close-up" view), but the other brands don't have such clear identifications. Waiting confirming records that might be found, there are uncertainties as to (1) how Crown Can Company would have gotten involved with a brewery far, far west of its other customers; and (2) the circumstances that Finer Flavor Beer examples have "12oz" and "11oz" printed on the labels but the cans appear to be the same size.
The 3rd picture shows the opening directions panel for a Finer Flavor Beer.
 
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