A few years ago, a friend of the family bought an old house. When renovating it, they opened a closet door in the kitchen-which had been nailed shut. inside, they found all kinds of stuff-bottled water from the 1890’s, plus several cans of food (canned vegetables)-from the labels, they looked like they were from before the First World War.
They were goint to throw this stuff out, so i took a couple of the water bottles home-and gave them to a friend, who is into antiques. he thought them to be quite valuable-which I find weird-do people collect this rubbish? What do you do with it?
As to the cans, it’s the labels that are (possibly) valuable. Not positive on this, but I would imagine that the canned food itself is worthless, monetarily or food-wise.
Link to vintage label site.
Rule of thumb: If it’s man-made, and it’s old, somebody probably collects it somewhere.
Agreed, there are collectors for this.
personally I would love to see the food tested, is there any reason it would be bad if the seal was intact?
If any of the companies are still in existance, contact them. They often pay very well for examples of their early products.
You should try opening up one of the cans just to see what century old food looks like.
How long it can last, exactly, is debatable. Shelf life varies, of course, by what’s in the can. Acidic items like tomatoes or orange wedges, probably less than say, beans or corn. Studies have shown that if properly sealed and correctly stored, the food can remain uncontaminated almost indefinitely. The nutritional value may decline, sometimes significantly, with extreme age, but it will remain technically edible.
I wonder how long anchovies would be edible?
I find it surprising that the food might still be edible. I opened a forgotten can of Campbell’s tomato soup — it probably was about 10 years old — and it was clearly degraded.
I am thinking food like peanut butter, pure fat and protein (well mostly anyway) after 100 years or more you would still have a jar of fat and protein no?
There is a collectors market. An assortment of old canned foods was once featured on The Antiques Roadshow. They had the cans, with labels, IIRC. (Not just the labels.) I wouldn’t open them or otherwise alter them (and I wouldn’t remove labels) before checking to see how that will affect value. Condition is everything with collectibles, and a very small change in condition (a slight tear, for example) might radically alter value.
The food’s probably pure Botox by now. Open up a plastic surgery clinic and shoot it into saggy housewives. PROFIT!
Anchovies are never edible! 
Yeah, like I said, acidic items like tomatoes probably more prone to volatility than more inert products. Probably still edible in the sense that it won’t kill you, but definitely a desperate last resort meal. The studies I linked to described 100+ year old cans that were still in edible condition.
I was going to mention the Antiques Roadshow episode as well.
The labels on the cans are the most valuable - a form of art that is impossible to find in some cases. I think a particular label from pork and beans was valuable in that show. At any case, I am sure this would be worth something - if for no other reason than have as a backdrop in movies from that period, or for a museum.
Years ago, before they ripped down the Stardust hotel/casino here in Vegas, their buffet had walls with stacks of antique cans of food - not a huge selection, but fun to look at nonetheless. We forget that in the “old days”, labels simply stated what was in the can, without all of the whizbang special colors and additional info and bar codes, etc. Some of those labels were beautifully done, but others are great in their simplicity.
I would put them on display at home, in cabinets with glass windows. So count me as someone who thinks they are worthy of keeping and NOT throwing out!
(Regarding eating anything from them, well - I doubt it.)
There’s another warning to be heeded in the final paragraph of this article:
I’ll also caution all you emptors to be caveating, because the thing reads like something from South Park, and many will find it equally revolting.
I saw an article in Penthouse once (back in the 1980s, I think) about old (pre-WWII) fruit-crate labels. It was amazing how unreflectingly racist some of them were – “Mammy Yams,” “Little African” oranges or something (the picture shows a terrified naked black toddler crawling away from a menacing crocodile), “Lime Kiln Club” (I don’t recall the product, but the picture showed a bunch of black men in a clubhouse having an incredibly crude and disorderly meeting of some sort).
Terry Zwigof, the cartoonist and director (Bad Santa) collects antique products, not food, but all the various stuff the Valmor company produced. Some of the artwork he included in an essay about it in Weirdo magazine was wonderful.
I like the idea of contacting the manufacturers, if they exist.
Also of opening them to see what’s inside!
And having one around just cause it’s cool, though I’d combine that with the second option, as well as a thorough cleaning afterwards.