Vintage 1948-1962 National Bohemian Bottle Cap - Mr. Boh Virginia 2 State Beer Tax Stamp - Baltimore Beer Collectible 🥤

🍺 Ever Wonder Why a Baltimore Beer Wears a Virginia Tax Stamp?

Pull open a rowhouse icebox on a hot Baltimore summer evening, decades back, and you'd have found a National Bohemian sweating on the shelf — the porch, the ballgame on the radio, and somewhere a bottle opener already worn smooth from years of popping caps just like this one. This little disc of lithographed tin has done its job and been kept anyway, tucked away instead of tossed in a bucket behind the bar, which is exactly why it's still here to tell its story.

This is a National Bohemian beer bottle cap, brewed by the National Brewing Company of Baltimore, Maryland, and it's offered here as new old stock. The crown is lithographed in bold gold/yellow and black across a silver-toned metal skirt, with "NATIONAL BOHEMIAN" arched proudly around the top edge. Front and center sits the unmistakable portrait of Mr. Boh himself — round-faced, monocle fixed over one knowing eye, mustache curled wide beneath his tipped cap — labeled simply "MR. BOH" beside him. Below his portrait, an outline map of the state of Virginia is printed in the same black ink, with a bold "2¢" tax figure worked right into the map's shape, and "VIRGINIA" arcing along the bottom rim to close the design. No manufacturer's date mark survives legibly on this piece, so its exact production year can't be pinned down — but the style, the mascot artwork, and the tax-indicium printing place it generally in the early-to-mid twentieth century, a wonderful small survivor of a very particular chapter in American brewing and tax history.

🍻 National Bohemian & Baltimore's Hometown Brewery

The National Brewing Company was founded in 1885 in Baltimore, Maryland, and over the following decades it grew into one of the most beloved regional brewing names anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic. Baltimoreans have long affectionately shortened the name to "Natty Boh," a nickname that still gets shouted across bar counters and stadium sections in the city today. The brand became so entwined with local identity that to mention National Bohemian in Baltimore is really to mention Baltimore itself — the beer of steel mill lunch pails, of harbor-front taverns, of Sunday afternoons on the stoop. Like many American breweries of its era, National's story moved through decades of consolidation and changing ownership as the industry around it modernized, but the name and its imagery held on with a stubbornness that mirrors the city's own character. The brand endures in name and spirit to this day, still poured and still recognized instantly by anyone who's spent time in Charm City.

👁️ Mr. Boh — Baltimore's One-Eyed Gentleman

No National Bohemian artifact means much without Mr. Boh, and this cap gives him pride of place. He's an odd little character when you really look at him — a bowler-style cap perched at a rakish angle, a single monocled eye peering out, and a mustache so magnificently curled it practically has its own personality. Local legend around Baltimore has long had fun with the fact that only one of his eyes is ever visible, with old-timers and barflies swapping their own theories over the years about why the other eye stays hidden behind that hat brim — nobody agrees, and that's half the charm of him. What isn't up for debate is how thoroughly Baltimore adopted him as an unofficial civic mascot. Collectors and locals alike recall that Mr. Boh's face was blown up onto a towering illuminated sign atop the old Brewers Hill brewery overlooking the harbor, a rooftop landmark that became — and by local account remains — one of the most recognizable pieces of skyline iconography in the city, visible for miles and beloved well beyond anyone who ever drank the beer itself. He turned up on scoreboards, on tavern walls, on game-day gear, worn