00:03 JEFF: This is the largest collection of beer
cans in the world.
00:15 JEFF: Welcome to Brewhouse Mountain.
Come on inside.
00:19 COMM: Over the course of 40 years, Jeff Lebo
has accumulated more than 87,000 beer cans.
00:27 JEFF: There are probably about 5000 cans in
this room.
00:29 COMM: His collection is valued at a whopping
1.6 million dollars and is kept in his holiday home, Brewhouse Mountain.
00:37 JEFF: It took me about 2 years to complete
this place but I say complete in quotations because it’s never really finished.
It’s sort of an ongoing labor of love.
00:50 COMM: Even if that love isn’t shared by
his wife, Lauri.
00:54 LAURI: I am not all that interested in the
beer cans.
I like the house, I enjoy spending time here but as far as beer cans goes I am really not
that interested in it.
01:06 JEFF: I started collecting when I was about
13 years old.
It was sort of a fad that was sweeping the United States.
And in addition to that I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood that also collected that
sort of got me into it.
My dad was also working for American Can Company that was the first can company in United States
too.
Actually the first can company in the world to patent beer cans back in 1935.
Right here we have the very first beer can ever to exist.
This is from the Krueger Company, New York, New Jersey.
And it was test marketed in 1935 in Virginia.
01:46 COMM: Jeff has bought and traded cans from
all over the world.
01:49 JEFF: I actually traded with a guy in Sweden
who was my same age and we were sort of like pen pals.
And to this day I have never met the guy.
He would send me a hundred cans, I will send him a hundred back.
And all these later, he and I are still trading together, which is pretty cool.
02:06 COMM: But having amassed such a large collection
he needed somewhere to display it.
02:11 JEFF: I decided back in about 1998 to build
Brewhouse Mountain.
It was always sort of a dream of mine to have a place to be able to display the whole collection.
02:22 JEFF: Here we have the American room where
people can stay.
These are all cans from the US of A. Tab-top cans which started in 1962.
02:33 JEFF: Here’s the bathroom; even the bathroom
has beer stuff all through it.
02:37 COMM: Jeff‘s wife Lauri isn’t as keen
on the cans as he is.
02:42 LAURI: If I were to ever get trapped in one
of his rooms with all the beer cans, before I’d actually take an interest in that for
mental stimulation to actually look at the beer cans.
I’d probably just chew my own arm off.
But it’s his love, I love my husband.
I like to indulge his passions.
We have made it work for ourselves, we have made it work for our lifestyle.
We are now renting it out as an Inn and it’s amazing the people who have come to stay here
and who are fascinated by this.
03:15 COMM: Visitors can stay in Brewhouse Mountain
for $469 a night.
And despite Lauri’s lack of interest in the collection, it seems the holiday home
will be keeping its beer can theme.
03:27 JEFF: I don’t anticipate ever selling the
whole collection.
It’s actually really hard selling any of it because I’ve worked really hard to build
it.
I like being able to sort of preserve some of the social history in a way, especially
these kinds of items because they were produced to be thrown away.
They were never meant to be art objects, they were never meant to be collected, they were
never meant to be saved.
They are actually meant to be discarded.