Our First Item for the Collection

The first object we added to the collection is a one-pound H and H Coffee keywind tin — a cylindrical can with a red over navy face, a small coffee-spray illustration between the H AND H and COFFEE type, the “We Roast It — Others Praise It” line at the base, and heavy rust and paint wear from decades in storage. The path that led to it on eBay started with a San Antonio Images of America volume, not a dealer catalog.

One of the first books we found related to the company was Downtown San Antonio (Images of America) by Joan Marston Korte and David L. Peché — the usual Arcadia Images of America trim with a large sepia photograph on a cream field (Amazon).

Toward the back of the book, on page 127, is a black-and-white photograph of Manuel M. Peché — the father of co-author David L. Peché — at the 601 Delaware Street plant gate, holding a small H and H Coffee tin.

Using that image, we were able to match a coffee tin on eBay: the one-pound H and H Coffee keywind shown here. The can lists H and H Coffee in San Antonio and Houston.

Update (2026-04-23): Twelve years on, a second, remarkably clean example of this same tin has now been documented for the collection — same red-and-navy ‘H AND H / COFFEE’ wordmark over the green coffee-plant spray, same ‘We Roast It – Others Praise It’ slogan, same yellow-and-blue ‘VACUUM PACKED’ starburst cartouches on the sides — but in near-shelf condition rather than the heavily oxidized state of this founding tin. Together the two frames bracket the range the paint and metal can travel between shelf-fresh and decades of storage wear.