NEWS WATCH; Bottle Caps, the Crown Jewels for One Collector

By SHELLY FREIERMAN

Art and commerce collide in Davide Mascherini's collection of inch-wide bottle caps, or crowns, as he calls them, which can be seen on his Web site (members.xoom.it/davidekorn /index.htm). The site features bottle tops from beverages from 159 countries. Some -- Aruba, Benin, Mali and Togo, for example -- are represented by one cap each. Countries like the United States, Poland and Germany are represented by hundreds of crowns. Pepsi and Coke can be found almost everywhere, from Pakistan to Hungary, but local favorites like Inca Kola, from Peru, can be seen on the site, too. SHELLY FREIERM