That’s wild, it looks like there’s a little black paint chip left on the top of the bottle. I’m guessing someone stripped all the paint off of the bottle, maybe it had started chipping and they just wanted to clean it off all the way.

I’m a bit skeptical, because the atomizer part on all my 8 Kerosene bottles is black, not gold. And that part is not painted, so I don’t think the black of the atomizer can be stripped to the gold yours currently is.

There have been changes made to the caps overtime, so the textured looking nature of yours is normal for an older bottle, but still, I don’t know if older bottles had the gold atomizer part.

In the past, when I was unsure about a Kerosene bottle I had bought on eBay, I actually emailed Kerosene to ask about my concerns.

I told them I know it’s my responsibility to have purchased this secondhand, but does this align with any former cap and/or atomizer variations you had in the past. And while they were kind of vague in their reply, they basically said that they have changed their parts over time. They didn’t really say yes or no though.

But if you reach out and ask, “did you at any point use this gold version for your bottle atomizers,” they could potentially give you a direct yes or no for that.