A remarkable spread

OWATONNA, Minn. — Ninety-six square feet of table-top real estate holds about two-thirds of Scott Krause’s butter box collection. The 8- by 12- foot table space holds about 980 boxes.

And yes, these are butter boxes, the small, branded cardboard containers which hold four sticks of buttery deliciousness.

“It’s an addiction,” Krause said. “If I drank beer as much as I collect butter boxes, I’d be alcoholic.”

Though he has never counted his full collection, Krause believes it numbers around 1,500 boxes, of which about 1,000 are unique.

“It’s a rush when you find one that you don’t have,” Krause said.

Krause and his dad, Loren, milked around 100-120 cows until 2021. Now, Krause raises beef and dairy animals.

His butter box collection spans about 100 years of butter boxes. His earliest boxes are from the 1920s, he said, and a few familiar boxes from the current decade also grace his collection. Most boxes are from the 1950s and 1960s.

“That was a time when a lot of those creameries (were) a center point of most little communities,” Krause said.

Krause’s collection has boxes representing creameries largely from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota and a few from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Wyoming. Many of his boxes are from creameries that once existed in southeast Minnesota.

“I like to get the ones that are more local,” Krause said. “It’s always fun just finding one that you never had or found.”

Several of his favorite butter boxes include Moose Lake Special Creamery, Lakeland Creamery and Mountain Lake Creamery, each of which has an outdoor scene with a lake depicted on the front of the box. Another favorite box is the Ewald Bros. butter box. This box features a Guernsey cow on the front. The Krause’s milked predominantly Guernseys until the 1980s when they began switching to Holsteins and some Jerseys.

Krause’s collection is not displayed yet. He hopes to eventually get the boxes under glass in alphabetical order by county.

Krause finds the butter boxes at antique stores, swap meets, online auctions, Facebook Marketplace and more. Everywhere he goes he gives out his number to vendors, asking them to call him if they get a box.

“Every couple of months you find a different one,” Krause said. “Sometimes, you go for a long time and do not find any, but I’m always on the lookout.”

If he has time on the weekends, he goes hunting at antique stores.

“It’s fun to do,” Krause said. “When I go somewhere, I just get excited, like, am I going to find one or not?”

Local towns’ history centers can also be helpful when it comes to knowing what creameries existed, Krause said. Krause also watches for old creamery buildings in the countryside when he and his dad go for drives.

While prices vary, Krause said the most he has ever spent on a box in his collection is about $70.

“I like to go to the swap meets because those guys you can work with,” Krause said. “If they want to get rid of it … you can give them an offer and they’ll usually take it.”

Krause said once he got caught up in an online auction bidding on boxes and the price went to $600. He decided he had to quit and did not get the boxes. A few months later, he found the same box designs for less.

If a box is selling cheaply, he will buy a duplicate that he can trade or sell with someone else if he wants to.

Krause said he has only been scammed once, and that was on Facebook Marketplace.

“They got my money and I didn’t get the boxes,” Krause said. “There’s a crook in every business, even butter boxes.”

Krause started collecting about 20 years ago. He was first introduced to the hobby by a dairy field representative who came to the farm. Krause said the field representative would show him whenever he found a butter box.

“I never dreamed back in those days I’d be doing this,” Krause said.

Krause knows a few other people who collect butter boxes. He is part of a group with a Facebook page dedicated to butter box collecting. He said his parents’ generation had a different mentality when it came to saving things.

“Everyone else thinks it’s junk and they throw it out,” Krause said. “There’s probably a lot of butter boxes that were in someone’s attic that just got tossed.”

Besides butter boxes, Krause has a small collection of cardboard containers from other dairy products. He also collects John Deere farm toys and has a collection of about 1,500 beer cans.

“It’s always fun, just the challenge to find another one,” he said.

Looking to the future, Krause hopes to collect for as long as he can.

“Maybe I’m too old fashioned, but … I like doing it,” he said.

Eventually, he said he is thinking about donating the collection to the Minnesota State Fair for permanent display. He would like to have them in the dairy building near the Princess Kay of the Milky Way butter sculpting booth.