POPCAN.ORG – Is a personal project of Michael A. Coan. Started to collect soda/pop cans back in the late 1980’s. Took a few years off from collecting here and there for life reasons. POPCAN.ORG domain/name started around 1998 (I think). I have collected mostly cans, my main focus on soda/pop cans – but had always loved Water cans for some reason (water canned in 12oz cans).
Introduction to Pathwater:
July 2019, while on a family vacation trip to Yellowstone National Park, I found my very first Pathwater bottle. At this point, started doing some research and looking and started to collect other Pathwater bottles I could find.
Below is a picture from July 2020 (1 year) into collecting Pathwater bottles… around 25 unique bottles in my collection at that time.
September 2021 – Skip Miller reached out to me – and we started a friendship which included trading Pathwater bottles.
February 2022 – Even though I am pretty strong in saying that I only buy and trade, I do not sell (even on my business cards pictures near the top of this page) – Skip made an offer to buy my collection, which at this time was around 60 unique bottles. Many bottles he already had, but I had quite a few that are possible test and/or prototype bottles that could not be found anywhere. He must have known he made a good offer because I did not say my normal “no” quickly, and actually told him I would need to think about it.
April 2022 – Well I decided to sell my Pathwater bottle collection to Skip. I offered to drive down to Florida (from Illinois) to deliver them to him personally. I also already found a couple more bottles that I added to the collection.
May 2022 – January 2024 – During this time, I continued to look for new bottles – suppling them to Skip if he still needed them, and started back up a small collection with duplicates that Skip already had. We kept in contact letting us know of new bottles – as I travel often east of the Mississippi… and Texas, Missouri and a few other places west of the Mississippi…. I would often make trips picking up Pathwater bottles.
Also during this time, he knew how much I loved this collection, and how hard it was to part with them, and cared so much that I continued to help grow it – so he talked to me about his wishes to make sure the Pathwater collection gets back to me once he passed. When talking with me, he would often say “We have added xxxx bottle to our collection” – and he even joked with his sister that he was just “renting” the Pathwater bottle collection as he made sure they all knew of his wishes.
January 20, 2024 – Skip passed away. He loved this collection so much, it is even mentioned in his obituary (below)
April 2026 – With myself living in Illinois, Skips sister living in Maine, and the collection down in Florida – it took awhile to coordinate our schedules to arrange picking up the collection. I think there were about 370 unique bottles in his collection, along with many duplicates – so somehow was able to wrap and pack up all the bottles. (Pictures below)
May/June 2026 – Spent many days going through each bottle, inventorying each of them, and creating a new updated list of what bottles are now in the collection. (As between 2024-2026, I also picked up a few new bottles… but was hard as before I had them back in-hand, I was not 100% sure of what we had and didn’t have.)
July 2026 – Decided I need to get this collection out on my website, and share it with those who want to check it out. This also allows me to quickly see what I have in my collection. I have also tried to add my notes of “WANTED CANS” to this list. Please let me know if you have any, or know of any additional Pathwater bottles that we can add to our collection.
Michael A. Coan / COAN.NET / POPCAN.ORG (Page originally made July 2026)