I collect antiques. I had a pretty massive Coca-Cola collection at one time – memorabilia, the old stuff. It’s advertising in general. I used to find it at flea markets, yard sales, antique shows, E-bay.
What got you interested in collecting?
Like all kids, playing in the woods we’d come across these old bottle dumps of people throwing stuff away. We were digging around and I found a Coke bottle and I stuck it in the garage and I found it years later. I always thought it was interesting because the bottle read: “Bottle patented Dec. 25, 1923.” I thought, that’s Christmas; why would it be Christmas on this Coke bottle? So I found a book on Coca-Cola memorabilia and it said that in the 1920s they issued patents like on the Tuesday of each week. That bottle, when they re-patented it, it happened to fall on Dec. 25. So even though they weren’t open that day that’s what was probably put on every bottle that Coke manufactured until probably 1937.
So you have scores and scores of Coke memorabilia?
Yes. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of it but I still have a garage that’s full of it. I still collect antique scales – sort of, making it look like a country store. One thing leads to another, but part of my retirement plan is to start getting rid of it because it’s massive and you don’t know – you have two bottle openers and one is worth $3 and another could be $300. The old typewriters and adding machines, I got into that when I started doing the country store thing. So I would pick them up at antique malls. I used to get them at flea markets for $10 but now they are coming back up in prices. So you find stuff around. Once you collect, you can’t stop.
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