Q: I was offered $1,000 for my whole label collection and someone just told me that a beer can with the Class & Nachod Brewing Company label is worth $100,000. Why is my label that valuable? How old is it?

A: Finding the age was easy. The woman’s hair-do dates from the 1930s. We looked in Kovels’ book The Label Made Me Buy It and learned the words “Internal Revenue Tax Paid” on the left side of the label were required by law from December 1933 to March 1950. Then we searched a number of books listing breweries in the United States and found the name Class & Nachod Brewing Company was used on labels as early as 1896 to as recently as 1936.

The company closed for several years. So your label was used sometime from 1933 to 1936. It is a bottle, not a can label. We lucked out on the question of value. We found a picture of the Class & Nachod beer can, a one of a kind they said, on therustybunch.com. It was part of a running commentary on who Class was, when the brand was used, etc. It also included information on labels for Class Sparkling Ale and Class Lager Beer. It ended “I agree with Ed, spend US$10 for the label instead of $100K for the can!” That offhand comment says it all, the can may be priceless but the label is worth $10.