I am just about to move out of a house that was built in 1939. I found two old oil cans in the ba*****t one is Skelly which I have spotted numerous signs in east Texas. The other is ACTOL, this one is all steel, best I have found is that Standard Oil purchased ACTOL (Houston Company) back in the 40s? Any of you ever see this oil before? Both cans are in great condition and have about half a can in each.
Skelly looks like a cardboard can from the mid sixties the Actol all tin and older, forties or even thirties looks right.
I'm by no means an expert on oil cans but I was very active in the petroliana hobby for about 20 years. The composite Skelly can is likely from the 1970's or 80's. You can narrow it down by checking the API service rating. I've seen other Actol cans that had a much older looking font. They were from the early-mid 1950's. I'm guessing yours is from the 60's. Does it have a zip code? API service rating? Metal quarts were still being used by some companies at least as late as the late 1980's so you can't date them just by the type of can. Neither can has much collector appeal or value.
The ACTOL has Houston zip code on it, I will check for the API rating on both. Thanks for the info. I believe it says Humble oil on it as well.
The Skelly can is from the late '60s-early '70s. We had a Skelly station in my home town in eastern Nebraska and I slammed a lot of quarts of the stuff into whatever we had running unless we got 5-gallon cans from the Co-op in Wahoo.
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