Gusto In Grafton

There are people who buy and sell tattered Superman comics and old telephones, but the citizens of Grafton, Iowa (pop. 254), are learning that fortunes can be made out of empty beer cans. The town fathers celebrated Grafton's centennial last month by ordering up 48,000 cans of "Hundertjahriges Jubilaum Beer" (the town has a lot of German descendants) from a Minnesota brewer. They ordered another 12,000 empty cans as souvenirs. The beer has done a brisk business at $1 per can, but the empties, at the same price, have done even better, thanks to ads placed in two magazines published for beer-can collectors. The demand proved so great that a tiny black market sprang up, with empty beer cans changing hands at $5 each. "There were lots of folks who just drove into town, bought a couple cans full of air and drove right back out," said Allen Kruger, Chairman for Grafton's Centennial Celebration. Now that the empty cans are almost gone, Grafton is refusing to sell any more at all, hoping that the price will continue to rise. And what will the authorities do with their oddly earned profits? "Oh, we'll probably just fight over them like most people do," said Kruger.

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