darthskellington
Dark Lord of the Typos
Collectible of the Day
Today’s collectibles are Dixie Cups produced by the Dixie/Northern, whose parent company at the time was the American Can Co. For anyone not familiar with Dixie Cups, they are small, disposable paper cups often printed with colorful designs or licensed images. Dispensers can be purchased for easy…um…dispensing in the kitchen, bathroom, or wherever. Four different series of cups were released…one for each movie, and a final set called Saga. Each set featured cups adorned with characters, vehicles, scenes, and even trivia from the movies. The Saga set featured images from all three original movies. It also reused some of the line artwork used in previous series, but recolored them to created entirely new looking cups. There are over 120 cups in all 4 series combined.
These cups are not particularly valuable individually, although you will often see sellers attempting to get $2 or more per cup in small auction lots. Bide your time and you can pick some up cheap. In addition to loose lots, you can also buy opened and unopened boxes of them. I personally can’t bring myself to open a sealed box, but that is probably the most cost effective way to star completing a set. The boxes Dixie Cups came in are also covered in attractive Star Wars artwork or photos, and can be collected sealed, empty, or flattened.... but that is a collectible for another day.
The first image shows a sampling of Empire Strikes Back cups. The second shows an assortment of Star Wars cups, from the collection of fellow Bothan Spy rogueace2000. A number of the vehicle cups pictured were recolored and used in the Saga series.
For those interested in other paper cups, there have also been vintage and modern party cups (usually only one design per series), as well as numerous fast food beverage cups.
Discuss this collectible here.
If you have an item you'd like to have featured, please PM me and provide a detailed description and a link to a medium sized, relatively in-focus photo.
