- If you look at their ring,
it is slightly more oval,
while the one on the right
is slightly more D shaped.
- Yeah.
(can fizzes)
(air whooshing)
I'm Jessica Hester, staff
writer at Atlas Obscura.
And this is Show & Tell.
A series where we chat
with fascinating people
about fascinating things that they own.
I'm thrilled to be speaking
with archaeologist Jobbe Wijnen,
who has an enormous
collection of pull tabs,
little gizmos that open
soda and beer cans,
and he wants you to love
them as much as he does.
Hey, Jobbe.
- Hey, thank you for this introduction.
Yes, I'm pretty safe and fine in my office
here in Vlissingen in the Netherlands.
- How did you get started
doing pull-tab archaeology?
- We were doing formal excavation of sites
in the Netherlands.
And because we were
looking at the top soil,
I would just find them
with my metal detector.
At the beginning more
or less as an experiment
or as a maybe even with some irony,
I started collecting them
and putting them in bags,
and many archaeologists
everywhere in the world
do not regard
this as archeological
valuable material yet.
- Well, I know you have thousands.
And I'm wondering if you can show me
how do you collect them?
How do you store them at home?
- The most important part of
the collection is this book.
What this is is,
if you're doing an - making
an archaeological collection,
you need to be sure that
every new pull tab you find
is different from the one before.
Today we have over over 70 types.
And every time I get another pull tab,
I can look at the reference collection
and check if it's a different pull tab.
And this is probably the only
book with a global collection
of pull tabs
(laughing)
from an archaeological perspective.
So this book is unique and
it's sort of invaluable.
If I lose this or if it gets stolen
I can never replace this without
making a really big effort.
- What is that on the side of it?
Is that a--
- Yeah, it's a pull tab logo.
(both laughing)
- I love that.
What are the different
parts of a pull tab?
- This has changed quite a
lot over the last 60 years.
The original first pull taps,
the ones from 1960 to 1963,
they were solid.
So here you see a ring.
And you see a tab.
A 'tear strip' is called officially.
And originally the ring was
a solid piece of aluminum,
the edges were pretty
sharp, and it was very tiny.
So you could then grip it and therefore
people hurt their hands.
And well it was a first
design so to speak.
And this is a third-generation pull tap,
where the ring has been
enlarged significantly.
So people can put can
actually put their fingers in.
Let me get an old can.
Like for example, this one,
you can see that there's a
hole; there's no pull tab on it.
So this pull tab is removed.
And you can see that this
resembles the dash strip
of the pull tab on the next to it.
And this is a different
type but you can sort of
imagine that this fits together.
And then you can just grab the pull tab
and tear it off the can.
That's the idea how it should work.
Nowadays pull tabs are, of
course, a whole lot different.
Most people who are in the Western Europe
or in the United States
will not even remember
a pull tab anymore because nowadays
pull tabs stick to the can.
So the morphology of them
has completely changed.
- Yeah, I've never used
one of the tear strips,
but it looks fun.
Like I can imagine it making a cool sound
and being kind of satisfying to rip open.
- It is.
But of course, there's also the downside
and that's that these
things they got discarded
everywhere in the world.
And you will just find them everywhere.
My, thesis, so to speak,
is that everywhere
where there's tourism, where people go,
you will find pull tabs
if you look long enough.
- I mean, you said you
have 70 different types,
which sounds like a lot to me.
So what are some of the
kind of more granular,
like smaller differences
that you would notice?
- Whoo, this is going to be hard to show?
(laughing)
But here if the camera
can take this resolution,
you see two tabs.
- Yep.
- And I should turn it around.
And I think your left side is,
if you look at the ring,
- Yep
- It is slightly more oval,
while the one on the right
is slightly more D shaped.
So
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, totally.
Yeah.
- So that's a very easy
difference to recognize
once you get a feel for it.
But then if you look--
- Once I put my glasses on.
(laughing)
- Yes, exactly.
Then on the back side of those,
in this case, they are
identical on that aspect.
But you can see, if you can
see that there is slight
indentations here.
- Yep, yep.
- And those indentations differ
on different types of pull tabs.
And sometimes the difference
between two of these
will only be one of those notches.
And that's the only difference there is.
- Yeah.
Do you use any tools
like magnifying glasses
or anything like that?
- Well, I was just going to get into that
because I made this thing.
And this is a really fun thing to--
- Oh my Gosh, that's so cool.
(chuckles)
- Yeah, you can make
this at home very easily
just start collecting and
put them on a piece of string
on a little wooden board.
And you can start looking
at the differences.
And then you can see that
I make little divisions
in how many notches they have.
So here's the three
notch, here's two notch
and here's one notch.
And then here is the pull tab attached.
- So are those all the same ones
that are in the reference book?
- No, these are the extras.
Of course I cannot touch
the reference collection.
That's something an
archaeologist can not do.
That's sort of the Holy Book
of archaeology of pull tabs.
Reference collection has
to stay intact always.
I cannot swap a pull tab
because I am in that mood
of swapping things, no.
I cannot do it.
The one in the collection is
the one in the collection.
And that's the only one
of that type there is
or maybe one of two.
- Do you have any exciting,
new pull tabs that have arrived
that you really like?
- This is the, this is a very special one.
This one came from official
archaeology dig in Tasmania.
- Oh cool.
- This one was sent because
it was found in the top soil.
And the top soil is often mixed up.
Which means for an archaeologist,
you cannot say it's this layer,
it's from this time period.
Yes, somebody dropped the pull tab,
but we don't know when
and we don't know where
and we don't know who it was.
This was just a surface find.
So my project constantly
raises discussion.
I get angry emails from people
who say, you can't do this.
You cannot ship this from
Australia to the Netherlands,
that's illegal-heritage trafficking.
And then other archaeologists
of the same country say
that's rubbish.
It's literally rubbish.
But that's not true.
(laughing)
You can send it,
absolutely, no problem.
- That's so crazy to
think about the fact that
there are so many different interactions
that took place that are all
imported in that one bag.
- Yeah, sure, every pull tab
was was used by one person
and then discarded.
And then so many years later,
so often 50, 60 years later
it was picked up by a metal detectorist
or just somebody in the streets
and then shipped to me.
So that's 1,500 pull tabs,
it's 1,500 little stories.
I really like that.
(upbeat music)
- It's obviously so different
than you know the value
you would place on like a dinosaur fossil
because there are so few of them
comparatively speaking, right?
- I think the core is
that for archaeologists,
we are trained in thinking in protection,
we have to protect the
vulnerable materials
and cultural heritage from the past.
But the value is not always
in the material itself.
The value is connected to the material,
and when you have pull
tabs, of which there are
trillions and trillions,
you can hardly say that every
pull tab that's picked up
from the soil is valuable
because it's older than 50 years.
That's, it doesn't make sense.
If you start thinking of
archaeology like that,
then suddenly everything is of high value
and then you can touch
nothing at all anymore.
- What is your recommendation
for if I want to go out
this weekend looking for pull tabs,
where should I go look?
- Yes, I hope you do.
Because that's really the
big thing in my project is
I can only make this
citizen-science reference collection
if people help me out
and send me pull tabs.
So this takes a little bit of practice.
But if you wanna have spots where you can
definitely find them and even the old ones
from the '80s and the '70s,
then go to park benches
in the park or schools
or in the vicinity of
fast food restaurants.
You will find pull tabs if you look.
- Hopefully. I'll try to find
some and send them to you.
(laughing)
Thank you so much for chatting with us
and showing us your collection.
If people wanna find you
online or send stuff to you,
how do they do that?
- So you can find me on YouTube
or Instagram or Facebook.
The website is pulltabarchaeology.com.
And if you want to support financially,
you can go to Patreon.
We have a Patreon account,
patreon.com/pulltabs.
But the most important thing
is to collect pull tabs
for yourself or for my project,
and then send them to me
because making your own archaeology
is really the core of this project.
So please do that first before
you think of supporting me.
- Well, I hope you stay safe
and I hope you find incredible tabs.
(laughing)
and hopefully your collection
will continue to grow.
- Yes, I hope so too, thank you.
- Thanks for watching Show & Tell.
If you have suggestions for
people we should consider
talking to in these videos,
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