Some of the Sebewaing Brewing Company bottle body labels had numbers along the left and right side (see the picture on the left).  The three labels with this feature are Sebewaing, Sport, and Old Style (lion’s head, not the flying goose).  The body labels like the neck labels were shipped and stored in bundles that were held together with cotton string (see the sample bundle on the right).  Pride of Michigan (P.O.M.) was a label without numbers, but shows what a bundle of labels looks like).

Once loaded in the labeling machine, I would imagine the string was cut and the machine would apply the labels to the bottle body and neck.  However, before the body labels were placed in the machine, they were clamped in a vise and a saw was used to notch both side of the label with the date of bottling.  The left side was to mark the day and the right side marked the month.  So if beer was bottled on 8/23 of a year, the left side would have a notch at the 20 and 3 and the right side a notch at 8.  This was Sebewaing’s version of born on dating like what Anheuser-Busch first introduced in their beer line during the 1990’s.

Buyers beware when you see a bottle for sale on E-bay or somewhere else of one of these three labels, look for notches and then ask for a picture of the bottom of the bottle that should reveal a date before 1966.  Pictured left here is an example of a bottle that probably had unused labels glued on by someone trying to pass it off as authentic.