Who picked up Coke bottles for spending money?
Posted by Sensitive-Elk7093@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 66 comments
I am the youngest of five, born in 1966. Mom would load us up and we walked ditches all over the Baton Rouge area. It was muddy and there were snakes, especially water moccasins. Regular size bottles were a nickel and 32oz bottles got you a dime!! But, they then had to be cleaned before you returned them or they would be rejected. We helped fund family vacations this way!! And if you wanted any extra money, you could freelance the ditches on the way to the PAC-A-Sac! These kids now days have not a clue!
Itsalmostover71@reddit
Question is who is still doing this? I am.
whealthy9@reddit
+1 here too
HousesRoadsAvenues@reddit
Looking around, raises my hand and keeps collecting. ABC = Always Be Collecting.
whealthy9@reddit
I started going through the trash at work too recently. I would never have done this a year ago but now IDGAF. Your opinions don’t pay my bills.
HousesRoadsAvenues@reddit
FUCK YEAH. Come join us LIGAF life-long collectorz!
There is tax-free money to be made. I write that with seriousness.
whealthy9@reddit
the recycling center my family goes to, we get even more for glass because they give us cash by weight! so i'm going extra hard on the treasure hunt for glass bottles!!!!
HousesRoadsAvenues@reddit
Sadly in NYS bottles are just five cents, same as cans and plastic containers.
Itsalmostover71@reddit
Same here in Oregon. Why sadly? I make over 💯 bucks a yr feeding the pig/butthole machine. Dats sum sweet sweet ganja babe here, be rockin da flower all duh waves homie, homie. 🤣
HousesRoadsAvenues@reddit
Ah, to be in Oregon! I say sadly out of ENVY my dear Oregonian!
One positive that has happened in the past 10 years or so: shops that take ALL containers from ALL stores, as long as they are stamped with for redemption. Gone are the days saving enough Walmart, local supermarket brands and other brands to take them to cash at those locations.
It's freed up time and put some more tax free coin in my wallet. :)
whealthy9@reddit
They are 5 cents in cali too. They’re are a couple states that are .10. But like I said, the recycling plant my family goes to does it by weight so glass we get more back. Also grocery stores in rich places will give you back $3 back per glass bottle but it’s cuz when you buy the bottle, you paid the $3 upfront. So really you’re not making money. Theyre just giving you your money back
Itsalmostover71@reddit
.05 cents a can, bottle here. I take 6-7 bags of empty 20oz Gatorade bottles every 2 months walk out with 28-34 bucks cash.
Slap on sum gloves or not and start feeding the butthole as I call it. It’s what it looks like to me, either that or a muckraker on the teley, which I don’t watch. 🤣 ya know the ones… it’s a cool payday for 20 minutes max of effort, short drive over the river. Off to Sonic from there lmao. Jk that’s a half tank of gas these days
whealthy9@reddit
we usually walk away with about $50 give or take!!
Itsalmostover71@reddit
How often?
Itsalmostover71@reddit
Started at age 6 in ‘77 in Long Beach, CA
HousesRoadsAvenues@reddit
You beat me in that. I started when I was 14, walking down the street when the law was first passed in NYS. I saw a can lying in the road & remembered they were each worth five cents. I picked that can up and began my life-long container collecting.
I am not ashamed!
Itsalmostover71@reddit
No race to being poor and bored is how I came up with “Poordom” so poor you’re bored, 🤣 so I went diggin for money is all. I didn’t like not havin mo la. Idk who wants to be that, ‘70’s were ruff down in the LBC lemme tell ya.
Itsalmostover71@reddit
I’m not afraid…
Reader47b@reddit
We collected aluminum cans by the creek and turned them into the grocery store for a little cash - enough for candy. That was back when you got real money for recycling, but I think the aluminum cans used to be made of much heavier stuff.
HousesRoadsAvenues@reddit
The aluminum WAS heavier back in the wayback.
deagh@reddit
We picked up cans and bottles both. Heck, our high school band had an unofficial can pickup fundraiser. We were only allowed to have two fundraising events a year, but the band director was like "So, aluminum is 70 cents a pound at the recycling center, and there are 24 cans in a pound. If you were to, totally on your own, go pick up cans and turn them in and then donate the money to the band, that would be awesome."
Lots of people would chuck their beer cans out of their car (yes, I'm aware that means they were drinking and driving) so we'd do a circuit up and down the back roads and could usually get $10-$20 worth of cans without too much trouble.
Once I did a run picking up bottles and managed to cobble together $5. Put a few of that in the car, bought sandwich fixings for the rest, and my best friend and I drove the 50 or so miles to the beach and spent the day there. The sunburn I got...
Hey-buuuddy@reddit
In Connecticut, it’s currently 10 cents redemption. I squirrel them away and it’s $50-100 a few times a year.
HousesRoadsAvenues@reddit
Is it ten cents in CT? Envy from NYS.
Plastic-Sentence9429@reddit
We used to do bottle drives for our sports teams in HS. Sometimes we'd do them for weed money.
curious-thatguy@reddit
Yep, that’s how I paid for my cigarettes as a kid. They didn’t really care how old you were then when they sold them to ya. I stopped decades ago. So. Yep I remember 🤔
Fish-Weekly@reddit
I remember when they went from 2 cents each to 10 cents each and we felt like we had struck gold
Bromodrosis@reddit
Cash 'em and give my money to a man named Curtis Loewe.
Feelin1972@reddit
I grew up in MI in the ‘70s and early ‘80s - we got a whopping 10 cents per bottle or can! I rode my bike around town regularly looking for them, 5 cans or bottles was enough for a full-sized candy bar and a Faygo.
elcad@reddit
Dad moved to MI in the mid '80s. Used to be able to buy snacks and soda from all the litter on the way into town. Dad always bought soda in Indiana and wouldn't let us cash those in.
LayerNo3634@reddit
A couple times a week, I'd walk to the ice house with nothing. Dumpster dive along the way. 1 bottle was a candy bar, 2 bottles a Coke, and 3 was like winning the lottery. One of my favorite childhood memories.
geddieman1@reddit
I didn’t pick them up, but I worked at a grocery store where I racked those returned bottles into the wooden racks seen here. All for $2.13/hour (IIRC).
Itsalmostover71@reddit
While you were doing that, I was earning the same over at Taco Bell, my 1st taxable gig.
PitoChueco@reddit
Yes, quickly blew the money I made on arcade games.
New-Sheepherder2239@reddit
I only dabbled in bottles just a little. One summer I crushed (literally) the aluminum cans though. I distinctly remember them paying $.32 per pound. I filled my dad’s pickup bed and a small trailer. I bought a rod and reel and a ton of junk wax baseball cards
jakexcited45@reddit
Picked up bottles and checked phone booths for spare change
imtoowhiteandnerdy@reddit
I sold Grit magazine when I was 12-years-old for extra money.
Strong_College_21@reddit
Who called all sodas Coke? 😁
Kid_supreme@reddit
Damn near everyone if they were Southern.
Chad_Hooper@reddit
Yep.
18RowdyBoy@reddit
We had a corner store and in the summer the back door was open. We would sneak in and grab an empty bottle and then take it around front and cash it in.At least we spent the money in his store 😂
erilaz7@reddit
Yep, we used to have family outings to collect bottles and aluminum cans. Also dumpster diving behind the big department stores.
anironicfigure@reddit
we lived in Lafayette Louisiana in a new build subdivision, and later in a similar spot in Arlington TX. I'd go through all the construction sites at the end of the day and load up on bottles to redeem. I'd hose them off at home and my mom would take me to the grocery store when I had a stack.
I think about those times a lot these days, esp when the great Topo Chico shortage happened a few years ago, all due to the lack of available bottles. I recycle, but it seems like our city doesn't actually recycle stuff when they pick it up. it just makes more sense to return and redeem and reuse.
pocketdare@reddit
Our entire dorm saved them in college and we took turns returning them for the deposits and the deposits were kept for "dorm damage" bill.
Infamous-Resolve-497@reddit
I sold bottles in Chicago… you earned your own money, and I always had money… your question brought a smile to my face because of the memories it evoked…
SilverStL@reddit
Picked them up walking home from school, stopped at the grocery store and bought a candy bar.
vinegar@reddit
After college I once dug through the recycle bin to run off a few copies of my resumé at kinkos
pirate-too-late@reddit
2 cents each. Didnt take long to add up! Pepsi was 6 cents a bottle, baseball cards, with a piece of pre-histotic gum, was a nickle.
slade797@reddit
Best part of this is that there are no coke bottles in that photo.
Braincloud@reddit
Sometime in the mid/late 70s before we even had the bottle bill here in Mass we used to collect aluminum cans to turn in for cash. I think it was based on weight or bags? But yeah we definitely spent time collecting them both before and after the deposit came into law!
BillyBainesInc@reddit
Spent a summer picking up beer bottles thrown out of pick up truck and from the abandoned house teens partied at. Had enough to by a sweet bike and pad my savings account.
nirreskeya@reddit
Not coke bottles, but hooked/sliced golf balls that went outside the course I lived by, and we sold them back to golfers for around 25 cents.
loony-cat@reddit
I did this every summer from about the age of 8 until I was 14. I mostly collected the 5¢ small bottles because there were a few variety stores near me who took them with no questions. I did collect the 15¢ large bottles but I had to get my mom to go with me to the grocery store to return them. The first time I went by myself and the guy at the counter kept the $1.50 and told me to get lost. Luckily my mom was in the grocery store and she went to the manager and complained. After that, it was better if my mom did the transaction.
I used the money to buy popsicles, comic books, and tennis balls during the summer. Bonus, I didn't have to share with my siblings.
Aggravating-Loss1805@reddit
On Sundays we would drive the big station wagon around the country roads. Pick up a bunch. After turning them in we would head the ice cream parlor.
Kindly-Section4178@reddit
My older brother and me had 700+bottles when they went from 3cent to 7cent per bottle it’s was like lottery money to us
ReticentGuru@reddit
I worked in a convenience store in the 60’s. Kids would bring in bottles. We had to “rack” (aka sort) them by bottler. Some of what they brought in were nasty. But in my younger days, I was the one bringing them in.
ave427@reddit
We collected cans off the sides of the road. We lived near a speedway and got permission to go on the grounds to collect them… at least I think we got permission. Then my dad would flatten the cans by stomping on them, put them in these big plastic bags and take them to wherever. I don’t recall getting any money though. I think he used the money to help buy groceries.
Jocks_Strapped@reddit
i could pick up enough around the yards, park and ditched on the way to the store I could buy so much candy I would make myself sick. Gum was like 3 or 4 pieces for .01 and a pack of noworlaters were .05
RaulDuke_76@reddit
Dude! Me and my homies scoured the alleyways in my neighborhood with an old appliance box tied to the red wagon. We’d fill the garden shed about once a week and then have to get a parent to get it all to the bottle depot to collect our riches.
I remember those hot sunny days hanging with my buddies and making some money as the best days of summer.
Now at 50 I’ve worked outside most of my life and am not looking forward to the day when I can’t and have to move into an office roll.
AtomicGrendel@reddit
My parent drank enough pop that I would return the bottles for the deposit and have enough to fill the tank of my car, go out to eat with my friends, and get a movie ticket for whatever show we were going to see that weekend.
Confirmationbias10@reddit
Yep. My grandmother had a Coke machine (It was actually from Coca-Cola) at her beauty shop so we would just take them to her because she would have them picked up for some sort of credit by the guy who brought her resupply every few weeks.
Also, you must be from the ATL area if you are calling all those bottles "COKE" when not a single one is an actual Coca-Cola lol.
rudolf_the_red@reddit
visiting my grandmother in new york we'd wake up in the morning and pick up all the beer cans and bottles left by the winos in the park and get 5 cent each.
Climboard@reddit
Yep, we’d turn them in and load up on candy and soda.
Skatchbro@reddit
Stole them from behind Walmart.
Mid-70s when Walmart was expanding but only in small towns at that point. The crated returned bottles were stacked on the dock out back. We’d snag a few at a time and return them inside the store. Only did it a few times because we got scared we’d get caught.
Sir_midi@reddit
In high school I would collect everyone’s returnables at parties. It was going well until my mother opened my trunk, saw it full of beer cans/bottles and got so scared she was going to send me away to a treatment center.
Vegetable_Whole_4825@reddit
Yep, like 10 cents a bottle. We would collect enough for a coke and a couple tootsie pops which I remember being around a $1.
FinancialEcho7915@reddit
I used to get a dime for the big ones & a nickel for the small ones.
Old_Goat_Ninja@reddit
Damn near every day during the summer. The local pool (The Plunge) was a big pool with diving boards and kids from all over town came to swim for the day. It cost 60 cents to get in. As a poor kid we never had 60 cents so I’d wake up and start hunting for bottles. Ditches, dumpsters, I didn’t care. When I had 6 bottles I turned them in at local store then took that 60 cents to the pool.