Dave Collis has a beer house, complete with a (dry) bar, full of anything to do with beer.
Dave Collis has a beer house, complete with a (dry) bar, full of anything to do with beer.
It is not about the beer, said Ōhau's Dave Colis, who is the proud owner of a building, the size of a small house, full of beer collectibles. As passions go, it started small and eventually became giant-sized.
The nation's Breweriana and Can Collectors Club also started small and nowhas members who chase up, labels, bottle caps, flagons, tap handles and icons, trays, towels, clothes, playing cards, coasters, openers, and more, though they began with just cans back in 1986.
Cans ... cans ... cans ...
A few beer cans attracted Dave's attention that same year during a stopover at a South Island pub. "I brought them home and soon after learned that a collectors club had started. They meet twice a year and the collectors swap items, collect bought or sold items for others and bring them down to the swap meets."
This year's AGM will be held in Ōhau, postponed from last year when it became just a localised social evening for those members living within a few hours from Horowhenua. Dave's 12m by 6m building is bulging with stuff, from calendars and posters to cans from around the world as well as bottles, coasters, glassware, pens and so on. He also has a bar in his can room, though it is a dry bar.
"Eventually I traveled through Europe for a while and posted home boxes of cans. One day my backpack full of cans, all empty, caused a bit of a problem at an airport."
His wife made a can celebrating Dave's can room in 2006.
While the non-can and non-bottle stuff in his extensive collection are exclusively from New Zealand, he has bottles and especially cans from all over the place. He has a number of really old steel cans, but said the content of his collection of country cans hails from no less than 100 countries.
"I am interested in any country that once made beer," he said. He has cans from Iran and Iraq, for example.
The latest collecting craze is craft beer bottles and cans, he said. "So many small nations have gone into craft beer, it is amazing."
Many craft beer containers are large: 440ml. New Zealand cans tend to be 330ml, though they once were 375ml. "They went down to 355ml and then to 330ml."
The largest bottle in the collection.
Dave said some people only collect a particular brand, but his collection is quite eclectic.
Prices go up when people only do one brand. "We swap, but also buy and sell. If you find a better quality version of one you already have, you can trade it."
He also has bottle openers, posters, and calendars and anything that takes his fancy such as clothing and signs, including the neon sign he had behind his bar.
In 2006 his family celebrated his 20 years of collecting with a commemorative can. "Dad used to help with everything and my wife decided to produce the can to celebrate our collecting fun."
The start of Dave's collection brought home from a pub in the South Island in 1986.
Collectors from around the country will be in Ōhau the weekend of November 5 for their AGM. "We will have a social the Friday night in my can room and then the AGM in the morning." He said the general public is welcome on Saturday from 12 noon onwards. He is expecting people from around the country. "They are coming from Alexandra to Auckland."
His can building will attract a lot of interest, not in the least because he moved it all from Ōpiki to Ōhau three years ago and created a building for it, even bigger than the one he had in Ōpiki. "It was a lot of work. I don't want to move again," he said.
"We got it all across in one piece, well wrapped in a huge container." Three years on, he's having to make room for more stuff, that his fellow collectors will be bringing him from around the country.
