Antique 1930s Coin Brand California Green Asparagus Crate Label 🪙 — Nash-De Camp Co. Distributors, San Francisco

Who Packed Coin Brand Asparagus? 🪙 Coin Brand California Green Asparagus, Nash-De Camp Company, San Francisco

Size: 9 3/4" x 9 1/2" ~ Little to no wear.

Money in the bank! This is an antique 1930s Coin Brand asparagus crate label, distributed by the Nash-De Camp Company out of San Francisco, California. It's as bold as a label gets: a solid black ground, a giant cream "Coin" outlined in red, and three stacks of coins towering beside it, blue, gold and silver, with the gold stack standing tallest. California is in green script underneath, then GREEN, then ASPARAGUS in big cream letters. For a crop that paid the bills, I can't think of a better picture.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• DISTRIBUTED BY NASH-DE CAMP COMPANY
• MAIN OFFICE SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA
• GROWN IN U.S.A.
• 33 LBS. NET WEIGHT
• Coin BRAND
• California GREEN ASPARAGUS
• REG. U.S.A. 1935 BY NASH-DE CAMP CO. (tiny type, lower left)

That little line in the corner checks out. The U.S. Patent Office file for COIN shows Nash De Camp Company of San Francisco filed it on June 22, 1935, claimed first use on May 31, 1935, and got it registered on December 24, 1935, as No. 331,006. The drawing on file is an illustration with coins in it. So the Coin brand was born in 1935, and this label can't be any older than that. And think about the timing: a big stack of gold coins on a label in 1935, just two years after the government called in the country's gold coins. I love that.

🍎 Nash-De Camp, a Fruit House from the North Woods

The Nash in Nash-De Camp goes all the way back to 1885, when a Vermont man named Fred Nash put $400 into a candy and tobacco shop in Devils Lake, a Dakota Territory boomtown. That shop grew into Nash Brothers, and between 1907 and 1918 the company bought up 54 fruit wholesalers across the northwestern United States and Canada. One of the things it built in those years was the Nash DeCamp Company, a California produce growing and marketing outfit that became one of the company's most prized concerns, incorporated in California on September 8, 1920. The parent moved its headquarters to Minneapolis in 1919 and went on as the Nash Finch Company, the big grocery wholesaler.

Nash-De Camp shipped under a whole string of brands, and in its later years it worked out of Visalia down in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1981 California's Agricultural Labor Relations Board certified the United Farm Workers as the representative of all the company's farm workers, after an election the union won 61 to 46. Nash Finch finally sold Nash-De Camp to Agriholding Inc. in 1999.

🌿 California Asparagus Country

California's asparagus story runs through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Chinese farmers put in the first commercial crop on Bouldin Island in 1892, by 1900 canned Delta asparagus was being shipped east, and in 1919 Thomas Foon Chew, the "Asparagus King," moved his Bayside Cannery to Isleton. Acreage grew three and a half times between 1918 and 1930, and by 1930 more than 350 camps in the Delta housed about 7,000 harvest workers. A 33-pound crate of California green asparagus with a stack of gold coins on the end was a pretty good way to say what that crop was worth.

🏡 Display

Crate Labels are a reminder of a bygone era but the amazing lithography process is unparalleled even to this day in my opinion. Museums and Art Institutes have galleries dedicated to them and more and more collectors are seeking these out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries then they will be very difficult to acquire.

Imagine this amazing vintage advertising hanging as home decor in any room of your home instead of a museum! That black ground and gold stack look sharp in a kitchen, a home office or anywhere near a banker, and it's a fun gift for a coin collector.