Anheuser Busch Eagle Blob Top BlobTop Bottle Washington DC St Louis Johns Bros For Sale

Anheuser-Busch “A & Eagle” blob-top export beer bottle

Washington, D.C. / St. Louis, Missouri
Johns Bros. F.W. Va. distributor heel mark

Key Features:

• Classic A & Eagle pictorial – one of the most recognizable brewery logos of the 19th century (STRONG EMBOSSING)

• Early blob top – transitional form, pre-crown cap dominance

• Dual-city embossing (St. Louis + Washington D.C.) → strong regional appeal

• Heel mark: “Johns Bros. F.W. Va.” → distributor attribution (adds scarcity layer)

• Light aqua glass with greenish base

• Clean, attic condition – no haze, no sickness, no staining

• Nice strike on embossing (important; pops well)

Date Range

Circa 1885–1895

Here’s why:

• Blob tops like this were fading out by the mid-1890s with crown caps taking over

• The A & Eagle trademark use exploded in the 1880s

• Distributor-marked bottles like this were common in that late 19th-century window

• The relatively refined glass + applied lip suggests not super early (not 1870s crude), but still pre-machine era

About the Distributor

Johns Bros., F.W. Va. (likely “Falling Waters, West Virginia”)

• Small regional beer distributors often ordered embossed bottles from big breweries like Anheuser-Busch

• These were used to build brand loyalty locally, not just generic return bottles

• That heel mark makes this more desirable than a plain AB bottle

Condition Assessment

• Lip: No chips, no cracks, but do note the manufacturing flaw that left a small pour-like-divet on the rim.

• Body: Overall very nice, but please note the long, vertifcal scuff line to the left of the slug plate (and small nearby patch) - see finger point pics.

• No haze / no sickness ✔

• Strong glass clarity ✔

• No chips or cracks ✔

• 9" T

Grade: 8.5/10 attic mint

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