Fall 2026 Militaria and Aviation Auction
Lot 6:
Description
SCARCE WWII Home-Front Del Monte Green Beans Crate – War Stuff, Dad. Del Monte Early Garden Whole Stringless Green Beans shipping crate, manufactured by Fibreboard Products Inc. of Stockton, California, for the California Packing Corporation, circa 1930s-1940s – later repurposed as a family keepsake box and pencil-inscribed on its flaps with "War stuffe, keep handy" (or possibly "keep out") and "Dad." This lot is a humble but evocative survivor of the American home front: a corrugated fiberboard shipping crate built to carry two dozen #2 tall tins of Del Monte brand green beans. The bold red, cream, and dark-green lithographed Del Monte Brand Quality label remains crisp on the front panel, complete with the "2 DOZEN, " "#2 TALL TINS, " and California Packing Corporation, Main Office: San Francisco imprint, while a second panel bears the Del Monte Food Products shield. The base retains the maker’s ink-stamped Certificate of Box Maker panel from Fibreboard Products Inc., Stockton, California, with its Extra Strong Box crest, burst-test rating, and production codes AH41, 24/2T, and 1091/2. A black paint-stencil merchant mark reading SPORLEDER / WALSENBURG appears on the top flap, identifying onward distribution through the Sporleder Selling Company, a wholesale grocery and general mercantile house operating in Walsenburg, Colorado. What elevates this crate beyond disposable packaging is its second life. At some point during or shortly after the war, a family member converted the empty carton into personal storage, penciling across the top flap and interior panel words that read, in a period cursive hand, something close to "War stuffe, keep handy" and, separately, "Dad" – though portions of the script are faint and not fully certain. Millions of such fiberboard boxes moved through wartime grocery distribution, but the great majority were broken down, discarded, or sent to paper drives; few survive intact, and fewer still carry personal inscriptions hinting at a domestic wartime ritual – a father’s or son’s effects set aside and marked off from the rest of the household. No named individual or separate biography has been identified; the story here rests entirely in the object’s construction, markings, and handwriting, evoking the anonymous but universal experience of an American family managing the material culture of war from the pantry outward. Physically, the crate is a single-wall corrugated heavy fiberboard shipping box of typical Depression/WWII-era grocery construction, staple-seamed with hinged top flaps. The front and one side panel carry the full-color Del Monte lithographed label described above; the base bears the Fibreboard Products Inc. maker’s stamp; the SPORLEDER / WALSENBURG stencil sits on the top flap beneath the pencil inscriptions. The interior floor shows faint pencil-drawn circles and small stapled reinforcement patches, apparently added when the box was converted from shipping to storage use. The box is empty in the photographs, with no accompanying contents or paper. Condition is fair to good for the type: corner splitting, tears and fraying to the upper flaps, scattered tape residue, dust soiling, and light surface creasing consistent with decades of handling and storage; the printed graphics and stencil remain bold and legible, and the pencil inscriptions, while faint in places, remain readable under raking light. A scarce and unusually personal survivor of Depression-and-war-era commercial packaging, this Del Monte crate’s pencil-inscribed "War stuffe… Dad" transforms an ordinary grocery box into a small, tangible relic of how one American family once organized the private business of war.
Share this lot:
