For many years, I was an offline antique dealer and estate liquidator. Many professional dealers are also excellent sources for restoration and craft ideas because we have all had to learn various old-time crafting techniques to repair or refurbish our items before they bring the dollars we need through sales.
Once, during my first few months in a new-to-me tourist town location, I was asked what kind of fun and old little things I had for sale to supply keepsakes to a graduating drill team squad. My mind went racing through my last estate pile in storage and settled on a large box of never-used vintage soda bottle caps.
When my customer came into my store the next morning, she was greeted with a large colorful display of vintage bottle cap earrings. Each pair of vintage bottle cap earrings had taken me less than 5 minutes to create, and came packaged on black velvet earring cards to give them a professional touch. She took all 36 sets hanging there. I went home that night and made 4 dozen the next day; the vintage bottle cap earrings were gone by closing time.
Vintage bottle cap earrings have been real money makers for me over the years. They work for small item sales at shows, in stores, and around other functions because they are old, inexpensive, colorful, memory provoking, and unique. Newer bottle cap earrings do not sell as well as those that are never-used old ones.
Bottle Cap Earrings Step One: Back in the days when I was making bottle cap earrings for resale, there was no such thing as online shopping. My bottle cap suppliers were found through hard work. Today finding caps is easy; go to eBay and type in ‘bottle cap lots’ and lots of never-used old piles of caps are available for sale.
Never-used old bottle caps will have clean cork backs, edges that go out in a pretty silver or gold ripple pattern, and most come with a sticker on the cork surface. You want the ones with the original sticker over the cork if you can find them, they sell the best.
On the day that I was looking on eBay a reasonably priced pile of 1,400 caps were only 30.00 with free shipping. Smaller lots and single pieces available too. 1,400 caps make 700 pairs of earrings. That is under 5-cents for caps per pair of earrings.
Bottle Cap Earrings Step Two: While on eBay you may also want to order some ear hook-style wires, earring display cards or bags, and some half-inch to one-inch tall jewelry ‘O’ rings. (Or, a cheap old chain can be taken apart for “O” rings.) All metal pieces should be in the same color.
Bottle Cap Earrings Step Three: Get out your trusty hammer and a heavy finishing nail, and get ready to whack a hole into your bottle cap. Put a small piece of masking tape on the colorful side of the cap, at the center of the top rim on your cap to keep your nail from scratching.
Bottle Cap Earrings Step Four: Aim the nail so that it lands as close to the rim edge as possible so that the caps hang nicely. Working on a towel helps to keep the cap in place. Always go from front to back with your hole so that no rough edges are on the colorful part.
There is a little room for error so don’t stress-out if your first whack produces a hole that is slightly off, they will probably still look just fine. Always go from front to back with your hole so that no rough edges are on the colorful part. Then, whack that nail hard; get your aggressions out. Tapping will not work to produce a hole.
Bottle Cap Earrings Step Five: Add the “O” ring to your hole in the bottle cap, and put your wires on. Place your finished product onto an earring card and you are done.
Options: I have tried hanging beads through holes of off the bottom of the caps and they did not sell well. A hanging chain of three caps going down sold now and then to younger people, but most people seemed to prefer the simple style.
Pricing: During the years that I was selling these offline, I charged between 3.00 and 5.00 a pair. Vintage Coca Cola lids were hard to come by in unused shape, and they were always priced in the 8.00 to 12.00 range. I realize that prices change on items based upon supply and demand. These prices are offered only as information and not intended as actual knowledge of prices happening on vintage bottle cap earrings this year.
