If most people were offered thousands of dollars for an old beer can, they’d think that was a pretty good deal. But Mike England of Ankeny is not so easily swayed by such offers.

England, an information technology specialist for the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division, collects breweriana, which includes any item bearing a brewer’s name, ranging from cans to steins to old-fashioned signs.

“This is the one my wife calls our trip to Australia,” he said on a recent afternoon as he pulled a can with faint specks of rust from one of many can-filled shelves in the basement in his Ankeny home. The 1939 can, printed with the brand name “Time,” has garnered offers of up to $7,500 from potential buyers because it is one of the best-looking cans that remain from the defunct Texas brewery that produced it. According to England, that brewery only canned a small batch of beer before going out of business.

England’s wife, Abbie, has tried to persuade him to sell that can and put the money toward their dream vacation. But he’s grown so attached to some items in his collection that it makes it difficult to think about selling them. England can point to a can and talk about the history of the brewery that produced it, and he even has stories of how particular cans were discovered and became part of his collection. For example, the Time can was found in a warehouse, atop a 23-foot-tall cold storage unit. He guesses that a delivery person must have thrown the can up in the rafters to hide the evidence of drinking on the job. He has similar stories of how other cans in his collection were discovered in unusual places, such as a crawl space in New Jersey or underneath a railroad depot in Oelwein. These stories bring a human element to the small metal cylinders that line the walls of his basement.

“It proves that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” he said.

England started collecting breweriana as a child. Growing up, his father would buy a six-pack of a local beer during their family vacations and keep the cans after he finished drinking it. More cans accumulated each year, until England and his father decided to add to their small collection by attending collectors’ shows to find interesting cans. In 1974, they joined the Beer Can Collectors of America, an organization that is now known as the Beer Collectibles Club of America. This fall, England became president of the 4,000-member international organization.

When England’s father died in 1978, he lost interest in collecting breweriana, and that interest didn’t return until 1991. Today, England has about 600 breweries represented in his collection. He tries to limit his purchases to items from breweries based in Iowa or surrounding states. He also focuses on cans that are older than he is. England estimates that he has about 1,100 cans in his collection.

One reason England likes the old cans is that they are so much different from what you can buy today, especially in color and design.

“The color combinations were so much greater then with these steel cans than what you can put on aluminum today,” England said.

Beer in cans first became available in 1935, when the Krueger Brewing Co. started selling two of its brews in that manner in Richmond, Va. The steel cans were flat-topped and required a can opener to drink from them. Cans with cone-shaped tops soon followed, and self-opening cans with pull tabs or tab tops were finally introduced in 1963 by the Pittsburgh Brewing Co.

England attends collectors’ shows, searches online auction sites such as eBay and advertises in local newspapers to find people who are interested in selling their cans and brewery advertising. One of the most unusual items England has bought is a kerosene-lit lamp from the Dubuque Brewing & Malting Co. He believes the sign was used in the mid-1890s, before Iowa had electricity.

He said the value of breweriana is growing steadily. About five years ago, a new sales record for a single can was set when someone paid close to $19,300 for a beer can. He said that sale set a precedent, and many cans have sold for more than $25,000 since then.

Although there is money to be made from the sale of these rare cans and brewery collectibles, you would first have to be willing to part with the items. As for England’s most valuable can, he’s still undecided on if he’s willing to make a deal for it.

“I won’t say that I will sell it,” England said. “But perhaps I will eventually and we’ll take that trip.”