Dear visitor,

My name is Bettina Costa and I'm Argentine. In January 2001, I emigrated to Switzerland. Since June 2006 I live in Rheinfelden, the beer capital of Switzerland.

Something that called my attention when I arrived in this country, was that all the people that I met, that's to say, the relatives and friends from whom later was my husband, Toni, collected something: sugar bags, matchboxes, stamps, pins, maps, photos of trains, coins, etc, etc. And all of them helped each other: when the stamp collector went to a bar, kept the sugar bag for the collector of this item. And the latter collected the stamps for the former. Whenever any of them went on holidays, when coming back, gave the maps used during the trip to the map collector, and the matchboxes, typical souvenir in the hotels, to the collector of this object.

I thought, “These Swiss are all collectors!”... With the time, I realized, that not ALL the Swiss were collectors, but almost ALL the relatives and friends from Toni.

I said to myself: “I must collect something too... but what?”... The question remained without an answer for a couple of months.

It should be something not already collected by any of the relatives or friends.

In March 2001 I saw in a restaurant beercoasters in their beercoaster holders on the tables. They were beercoasters from Warteck. I remembered that a friend in Argentina collected beercoasters, and many other things, in order to exchange them against pocket calendars. I decided to take a couple of them for my friend... and by the way... I kept one for me, since I found it very nice.

After eating, we went with friends to a pub in Basel. There, my brand-new “collection” rose from 1 to 4 different units. I thought, “How quickly it's possible to find beercoasters here in Switzerland!”... In Argentina the beercoasters are not very common.

A few days later we went on holidays to Southeast Asia. During the trip, I picked up one coaster for my friend and one for me. Unfortunately, as I was still unaware of the fact that I was already COLLECTOR, I collected not so many doubles to be able to exchange them.

Back from holidays, Toni began to inform everybody about my new hobby. That is how I began to receive beercoasters from everywhere. A great contributor is my mother-in-law, who travels a lot and tells her acquaintances about my collection. Sometimes I receive beercoasters from her, which she received from people whom I don't even know.

As long as my collection began to grow, I realized that I had to organize it. I began to enter the beercoasters in an Excel Sheet. At the beginning I classified them per country of the beercoaster. As sometimes the country where a beercoaster is found is unknown or confused, I decided to organize them per country of the brewery. In this way, I've “lost” countries like Malaysia, where we found mostly Carlsberg beercoasters.

Toni had the idea to look for other collectors in Internet, in order to exchange beercoasters... (by the way, I think that, as Toni helps me a lot with this hobby, it would be fair to speak about OUR collection, wouldn't be?)... So, I was telling you that we have made lot of interesting trades in Internet and we are in contact with very nice people. “Sailors have a lover in each port; we know people in almost every city.”

After visiting so many homepages from other collectors, we wanted to have our own too. At Christmas 2001 we began, with little knowledge, to build this homepage.

In May 2002, as we already had 1,500 beercoasters, we received our first big donation from a beer brewer from Laufen, the town where we live. This person received the beercoasters from an old collector, who apparently thought, that a beer brewer could be interested in beercoasters. In fact, he was not at all interested in them, and really he didn't know what to do with so many beercoasters, but he didn't want to throw them away. So, I think that he was very happy to learn that I was the ideal recipient for the beercoasters: 24 boxes, 60 cm large by 10 cm wide, full of beercoasters, mainly old Swiss and German ones. As I saw the boxes, I wanted to jump through my window!

Since then, we have received several donations from people who wanted to either give the coasters to the right person or just throw them away. The newspaper articles from April and May 2004 and our presence in Internet are the best publicity. One year after the publication of the articles, there was still people who contacted us.

By donations we receive beercoasters from all over the world, since we always find interesting material. By exchanges we look mainly for beercoasters from exotic countries, Spain and Portugal. We go crazy when we receive a coaster from a new country.

Since July 2005, this homepage is based on a modern database. So we can provide much more information to the “surfers” without much effort. That first I had to acquire this Know-How goes without saying.

Due to our journeys and our focused-exchanges, we have a lot of coasters from exotic countries. At the moment we have almost 20,000 pieces. Some boxes full of German beercoasters wait still to be published.

We collect only beercoasters from breweries. Those from restaurants, pubs, cigarettes or any other drink which is not beer are not interesting to us.

My favourite beercoasters belong to the sets “Sous-Bock Art” from Kronenbourg/France. My dream was to design beercoasters, or that some of my paintings illustrated the beercoasters of a brewery. Today these coasters exist! BarbaRoja brewery in Argentina made it possible.
Of course, I'm still willing to keep on putting a little bit of “art” on beercoasters. So, beer brewers: if you are interested, just contact me! Needless to say, that the payment to my artistic contribution would be in kind.

Thanks and Cheers!