(C) 2017 popsonhops
Ballantine Cuff Links
I once worked with a man who had been an employee at the Ballantine brewery in Newark during the 50’s. He worked in the lab, which essentially meant that he drank beer for a living. What a job!
Around that same time period, Ballantine’s owners Carl and Otto Badenhausen created a special beer as a holiday gift for distributors and retailers. I recall finding an article about a single bottle of this holiday brew surfacing and auctioning off for about $6,000. Apparently, there were only six known specimens at the time. I showed this article to my co-worker and he was in shock. He told me that he remembered pulling buckets of this beer off the bottling line “for testing” and that he had filled his own refrigerator with this particular beer.
One day, my co-worker surprised me with a gift. A single cuff link and some other Ballantine collectibles. Can’t seem to find any “links” to any values for Ballantine Cuff Links.
A little about the history of P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company. The brewery was founded in 1840 and at one time was the nation’s third largest brewer. The brewery was based in Newark, NJ until 1972 when Ballantine was sold to Falstaff Brewing. In 1985, Falstaff sold to Pabst Brewing. Pabst revived Ballantine Ale as part of their “craft beer” assets in 2014. Two months after the relaunch, Pabst sold the Ballantine name to Blue Ribbon Holdings Company for $700M. It seems that Blue Ribbon Holdings has lineage to Pabst and the move may just be moving money from one pocket to another.
Oh, for those that don’t know what a cuff link is, a cuff link is used as a fancy alternative to a button. A cuff link closes and secures a shirt’s cuff. It’s considered a men’s “jewelry” accessory.
