The Vladimir Dovgan Story

Below is a story about a man who became well known throughout Russia after Perstroika in 1991.  The story was written by Carol Matlack many years ago after Mr. Dovgan's business failed.  For miniature bottle collectors, Dovgan produced some of the most beautiful bottles our hobby as ever seen. 

The Vladimir Dovgan Story

Written in 1996

Vladimir Dovgan still radiates the self-confidence that made him Russia's first marketing superstar. The 33-year-old former factory worker built a $400 million-a-year business selling products of struggling Russian factories--and putting his beaming face on every one of them. But Dovgan's empire has now imploded. With credit cut off and unpaid suppliers suing, Dovgan has jettisoned two-thirds of his 600-person staff, dropped most product lines, and left his offices near Moscow's prestigious

Pushkin Square

for a distant suburb.

Dovgan now says he underestimated the difficulty of getting manufacturers moving again. "Are there Russian producers who can compete?" he asks. "I don't think so." But there's more to it than that. Russian consumers are maturing--and no longer impressed by Dovgan's "buy Russian" sales pitches. He also came up short in everything from quality control to pricing. Although gifted at promotion, he lacked solid financing and is now heavily in debt. Indeed, Dovgan is a B-school study in what can happen when entrepreneurial drive outruns the thin experience of Russia's first business executives.

Dovgan promises to revive his brand. In contrast to the 250-plus products he used to put his name and smile on, he will now stick to alcoholic beverages and soft drinks. But the challenges are many. Multinationals are making huge inroads. Some domestic producers are becoming tough competitors, too. Building a brand requires long-term financing and planning. And Dovgan doesn't have much of a head start: Millions of Russians know his name, but few became loyal customers.

After arriving in Moscow in 1995 from Togliatti in central Russia, Dovgan decided to jump-start the consumer-goods sector. Distribution systems had collapsed, and while shoppers wanted Russian goods, they worried that they might be tainted or stale. With a $1 million loan from a banker friend, Dovgan cut deals with several distillers to label and market their vodka for commissions of 2% to 3%.

Sales took off, even though Dovgan vodka cost more than most domestic brands. Dovgan soon had his name on everything from shampoo to chocolate and frozen dumplings. To lure customers, he started a TV show with a lottery. And he drew attention for his every move--from his daily swim in ice water to his sponsorship of a business school.

Yet trouble was brewing. Shoppers balked at Dovgan's prices, which sometimes matched those of multinationals manufacturing in Russia, such as Nestle and Mars Inc. As sales fell late last year, Perekriostok, a Moscow supermarket chain, dropped Dovgan products. "The prices were simply unreasonable," explains Igor Balelin, Perekriostok's sales manager. Dovgan beer, Balelin says, cost almost twice as much as imported Czech brew. By then, Dovgan had made a muddle of his market by putting the same label on everything, regardless of quality and price. "He needs to manage his brand portfolio," says Leonid Shutov, who runs Propaganda, a local advertising agency. "It doesn't send a clear message."

STILL DREAMING. The market sent one, though. As sales slowed, credit dried up and unpaid suppliers started screaming. Dovgan owes them more than $8 million, and 17 have sued. Dovgan's former partner, German Lillevyali, says that while sales last year were $400 million, the company cleared only $300,000 a month because of huge promotional expenses. It was after a bitter falling out with Lillevyali this year that Dovgan relaunched his enterprise.

Dovgan admits that he lost control and that product quality suffered because he couldn't keep tabs on hundreds of factories, distributors, and retailers. He expects multinationals to dominate the market and Russians to carve niches. Nonetheless, Dovgan still dreams of creating Russia's strongest brand name.

And he could succeed. The new focus on beverages, while it puts him head-to-head with Pepsi, Coke, Kristall vodka, and others, is a step in that direction. Dovgan also is talking to MFK Renaissance, Russia's top investment bank, about restructuring his debt. His face will be absent from his future labels. But if Dovgan gets his brand in order, he still may find reason to smile.

By Carol Matlack in Moscow

The Russian Vodka Story

There are many definitions of Russian vodka, but the most strict and classical one was made by the great Russian scientist, Dimitry Mendeleyev, who devoted his thesis for his doctorate degree to the improvement of vodka production in Russia.  In 1894, the Russian government patented his definition.  According to Mendeleyev's definition, "Only the spirit that contains, as its main ingredient, rye bread spirit prepared on the basis of Russian kinds of rye given triple distillation, dilluted according to the weight with soft spring water exactly to 40% by volume and additionally purified by a special filtration process, with insignificant (2-3%) additions of spirits made of other grains, can be considered "Moskovskaya Special Vodka."
A number of researchers looking into the history of vodka, hold that the main industrial features of its production and the word "vodka" itself, a diminutive of the Russian word "voda"(water) were born in Moscow, in the very heart of the capital in the Chudov monastery.  The Chudov monastery is located in the Kremlin grounds and was founded by Dimitry Donsky under the direction of the Metropolitan Alexius.  The date of the creation of vodka is conseidered to be in the 1450's.  However, the documents found by archeologists, enable researchers to assert today that priority in the production of vodka belongs not to Moscow, but to the earliest Russian city of Novgorod the Great, where the word "vodka" also came into being.  It was in Novgorod that the earliest dated evidence confirming this fact, Birch-Bark Document #65 datable to the 13th century, was found.

The most famous brand names in an immense variety of contemporary strong drinks are Moskovskaya Special Vodka and Stolichnaya Russian Vodka.  The time tested Moskovskaya Special Vodka, the production of which was started in the Soviet period as a realization of Mendeleyev's dream about classical vodka made of rye and specially treated spring water, has won more than a dozen gold medals at prestigious international and All-Union competitions.

The development of more dynamic sand and quartz filtration processes, enabled the industry to create in 1953, a new variety of vodka called Stolichnaya Russian Vodka. This is one of the best Russian high quality vodkas, remarkable for a special softness of drinking due to additions of small quantities of sugar.
Pshenichnaya(Wheat) Vodka is an original vodka which is wholly based on ethyl alcohol received from high quality grain, mainly wheat,  and improved drinking water.  It has a soft taste and low price.  For a long time it was considered to be the most popular brand of vodka in Russia.
The Golden Ring is a high quality vodka ranking as a specialty.  It is made according to classical technology with an addition of edible soda and acetic acid giving this vodka a soft taste and distinctive flavor.
Posolskaya(Ambassador) Vodka is an elite brand as regards its organoleptic properties and ecological purity and is closest to the classical Mendeleyev model - Moskovskaya Special Vodka.  Its technological distinction is that in the process of its production, it is subjected to an additional purification by degreased milk that provides it with a soft taste and pure flavor.

Drinking vodka in a cultural way, presumes a close acquaintance with one's companions.  They may be friends, good acquaintances or a group of people whose conduct is regimented by the situation(reception, festive occasion, etc).  Since vodka is not supposed to be drunk in a hurry, it is better to consume it at home, on a visit or in a restaurant at a well served table.  As vodka is a product ready for use, it should not be diluted with water. It is not recommended to drop ice cubes into a glass for serving vodka cold.  It is much better to freeze the glass first.  Vodka is best served at a temperature of 8-10C(46-50F)

The basic raw material used for Russian vodka is rye.  As indispensable additions to Russian rye vodka, some other cereals such as oats, wheat, barley and buckwheat are also used.  Russian rye vodka does not cause aggressive moods or heavy hangovers, which are characteristic of potato or especially beetroot sugar vodka, commonly found in home brew vodka.  The second most important raw component of Russian vodka is soft water.  Before the 1920's, water in the upper reaches of the Moskva River, Kliazma and Neva was suitable for these purposes.  Water is additionally purified in various ways before using, but is should never be boiled.  This is one of the traditional differences and advantages of Russian vodka.

It is not recommended to use cheese, boiled fish or mutton as refreshements with vodka.  Drinking water after vodka is bad form.  This refers particularily to carbonated beverages because the carbonic acid gas and other chemical components harmful to one's health that they contain and artificially speed up the absorption of alcohol in the blood.  The century old traditions in Russia formed a set of exquisite dishes and zakuskas that most harmoniously combine with vodka.  These are ham, veal, meat jelly, caviar, cured fillet of sturgeon, salmon, blinis, pelmeni, Russian soups, sour cabbage and salted mushrooms.  But the traditional simple dish of boiled potatoes with a salted cucumber still remains an ideal zakuska for Russian vodka to this day.

A mixture of organic substances, which are by-products of spirit fermentation, is called "fusel oil".  It is the toxic action of fusel oil that results in the heavy consequences of intoxication.  Even thoroughly refined home made vodka of double sublimation is more toxic than the ethyul spirit because home conditions do not allow strict maintenance of constant temperature(78.4C or 170F of ethanol boiling) and other technological subtleties as at the distillery.
This is probably more information than many of you wanted to know, but if you are a vodka drinker, this is the story of vodka from the Russian view and after all, they invented it:)

See you next time.

New Helmet Rye

I just won a great new addition to my collection of Pre Pro Whiskey jugs.  This one is a tan colored Helmet Rye by Max Fruhauf & Co. from Cincinnati, Ohio.  I believe this one to be really unique as I have never seen one like it before.  The most common one is the dark brown version.  Another unusual thing about this new beige version is that it has the name Max Fruhauf  Cincinnati Ohio engraved into the ceramic on the rear of the jug.  The dark brown version does not have that name engraving.  Both jugs have the name Helmet Rye engraved on to the visor of the helmet.  These are two of my favorite jugs.

See you next time.

I'm In Montana This Week

This is one beautiful state.  I have been working this week with my sales guy who handles Montana and Northern Idaho.  I flew into Spokane on Monday and we drove to Kooskia, Idaho to visit one of our dealers.  Then we headed over to Missoula Montana.  What a beautiful drive that was.  From Missoula we headed to Helena, and then Great Falls and then finally ended up in Bozeman.  If any of you ever have a chance to visit Montana, make sure you visit Western Montana.  A great trip would be to start in Kalispell at the top of Western Montana and then drive South and end up in Yellowstone.  You will never see anything more majestic than that trip.

Liquor in Montana is controlled by the state, as it is in most of the states in the Northwest.  They only have state controlled stores to buy hard liquor.  You  can buy beer and wine in the grocery stores.  But even with state controlled stores, the variety of miniatures you can find, varies from store to store and city to city.  You have to visit as many as you can to find different brands, even though all purchases are made through one state office in Helena and then shipped to warehouses where each store places their orders.  I visited four stores on my trip and finally at the last one, I found the Yazi Ginger glass bottle.  I had not seen it in any other store.  I bought 6 of them as they are hard to find in glass.  I also found out that there are two vodkas that are distilled and bottled in Montana, Flathead vodka and Vigilante vodka.  Unfortunately, neither one is currently being made in a miniature.  Micro distilleries are popping up all over the place just like micro breweries.  I try to visit as many of them as I can on my travels.  It is always interesting to me to hear from the owners how they got into the micro distilling business and what is special about their vodka.  Many of them say that they were vodka drinkers and could never find a vodka that suited them so they decided to make their own.  Then they tell me how their process is different from any other because of something that they do.  Sometimes it is the water.  Sometimes it is the grain or other product they use to distill their spirits.  For instance, Flathead vodka is made from sugar beets.  That is the first time I have heard about sugar beets being used to distill the spirit.  I know that Ciroc says that they make their vodka from sugar but they don;t say sugar beets.

The distillers that don;t make miniatures tell me it is because it is too expensive and time consuming.  They have to tear down their line to make it over to miniature bottling and then back again for their big bottles.  Others say they can;t find a supply of miniature bottles.  I think they just don;t want to be bothered.  Many of the ones who do make mini's understand the value of mini's in promoting their product.  Then tend to come from a background that exposed them to sales and or marketing.  Most of the ones who do not make mini's seem to come from a more disciplined background like science or engineering.

Some of the more interesting brands of micro distillers that do make mini vodka bottles are Goathead and Zebra out of Colorado, Dry Fly out of Washington, Cold River out of Maine and Cascade out of Oregon.  They all make unique glass bottle miniature vodkas that would look good in any collection.

Well, I'm headed home today and am looking forward to any packages of mini's I might have received this week while I was gone.

See you next time.

Three Beautiful New Additions To The Collection

Yes, these really are bottles.  They are called Figural bottles by collectors.  Figural bottles come is all kinds of shapes from animals to humans to comical figures to objects.  These three actually contain French Armagnac, which is similar to Cognac, except the spirit is not made from grapes in the Cognac region of France nor distilled there.  Only Cognac produced in the Cognac Region and made with grapes from the Cognac region is allowed to be called cognac.                                                                 

These Armagnac bottles are also made from Limoges China, which add to their beauty.  Each one of the bottles is named after a historic Monarch of France.  The Red one if for Henri IV, the Blue one if for Louis XIV and the Green one is for Napoleon.  Each bottle also has the coat of arms of the family.  Napoleon was not from a Royal family so his coat of arms is just an "N" for his family name.  So, not only are they beautiful pieces, they are represent a piece of history as well.  Just one of the interesting aspects of collecting mini bottles.  By the way, these are 2cl bottles.  That is almost 2 ounces.  So it is a true miniature bottle.

This is my first attempt at adding pictures to my blog so I am still trying to get a handle on it.   It isn;t perfect but a few attempts on my next blogs should make me pretty good.  I hope you enjoyed this article and the pictures. 

Til next time, stay healthy.

The Biggest Collection I Ever Bought

This collection was one of the greatest collections in the history of mini bottle collecting.  It started in 1978 when I received a letter from a woman telling me about her collection.  Her letter was in response to a magazine article she saw that contained an article about my collection.  She stated that she was getting older and was thinking about selling her collection.  I had never heard of her as a mini bottle collector so I asked her for the names of some of her favorite bottles.  When she replied with names like Old Camel and Buccaneer I got excited.  I asked her how many bottles she had and she replied about 8,000 or 9,000.  I told her I would like to come and visit her and she said that would be fine.  She lived in Rockport, IL and I lived in Los Angeles.  My Dad lived in Milwaukee.  So shortly after that conversation, I flew back to Milwaukee and picked up my Dad and off we went to Rockport.  When we got there, she took me upstairs to her bottle room and the first thing I saw were whiskies I never heard of.  Then I saw rums I never heard of, and gins and beers and figurals I had never seen.  I was so excited I couldn't stand it.  When we finally went back downstairs, she served us coffee and cookies and we began discussing her collection.  When I finally told her that I wanted to buy it, she said "Oh, I don;t think I want to sell it.  I would really miss my little babies."  I was shocked.  That was the whole reason I made the trip.  I was really disappointed when we left her home.

Four months later, she called me and told me she was ready to sell her collection and she was asking $25,000.  I countered with an offer of $20,000 and she declined.  Four months later she called and said she was willing to accept the $20,000 offer.  I declined her offer and came back with a $15,000 counter offer.  She declined.  About a year later I received a phone call from an attorney who handling her estate and had been advised that before her death, the woman had told the attorney that she had received a $20,000 offer on her collection from me.  The attorney was calling to tell me that the estate was willing to accept the $20,000 offer.  I explained to the attorney that the original $20,000 offer had been declined by her and that the most recent offer was $15,000.  The attorney blustered on about the value of the collection and the $15,000 offer was ridiculous.  When I asked him if he knew anything about minibottle collecting he replied that "no" he did not but that he knew about the value of things.  I then proceeded to start to explain to him that the boxes of bottles that were now in the basement of the old building where the law offices were located were probably starting to mildew and that the silverfish were probably starting to eat the glue on the back of labels and that once labels were destroyed the bottles would be worth nothing.  I could tell that he was a little concerned when I told him those things.  He then began to negotiate.  He said $19,000 and I said $16,000.  He then said $18,000 and I said $17,000.  He then said "Deal" and we had a deal.  I would come to his offices in Rockport and bring a cashiers check for $17,000 and take possesion of the collection.

That is when the fun started.  Where in the heck was I going to come up with $17,000?  I was a young guy with a wife and 5 children and a mortgage.  I went home and called my bank and asked them what kind of second mortgage I could get on my home and they gave me a number larger than what I needed.  Then came the hard part.  I had to discuss it with my wife before I could make a decision like that.  My wife had never been interested in my mini bottle collecting.  But like to good sport and bookkeeper that she is, after I explained that I thought this a once in a million opportunity and that I thought I could make a profit if I sold most of the collection, she agreed.

At about the same time, I heard about a new bottle club that was putting on a mini bottle show in Illinois.  The timing was perfect.  I flew back to Rockport the week of the bottle show in Hinsdale, Ill. and picked up the bottles.  I brought my good friend Linus Earl and his son Cliff because Linus asked if he could have first crack at the whiskies.  I said yes and off we went.  It took us two days to unpack the almost 100 boxes that the bottles were packed in.   Just to give you an idea of how good this collection was, Linus Earl was one of the top mini whiskey collectors in the world at that time.  He found 500 bottles of whiskey that he needed for his collection and half of those were bottles that he never heard of nor knew existed.  He was ecstatic.  He paid me $5 each and all of a sudden, I had $2500 of my investment back.  It actually turned out that she had 11,000 bottles in her collection and 8,000 or 9,000 as she thought.  I picked out 1,000 bottles for my self.  We had rented a U Haul truck and loaded up all the boxes and drove to Hinsdale.

When we got to the Ramada Inn, I decided to set up in my room rather than get a table in the show room because I was scared to death that someone might steal some of the bottles overnight and I would lose money, which I could not afford to do.  My good friend David Spaid was a big help to me by bringing in the top collectors of each type of spirit or figural type, one at a time, to see what they wanted to buy.  That led to a lot sales on Friday night and Saturday.  By the end of Saturday, I had sold $12,000 worth of bottles all together and still have one day to go.  I only needed to sell $5,000 more of the bottles and I would at least break even.  By 1:00PM on Sunday, I had not sold many of the remaining bottles and many of the collectors had already left for home.  I was getting nervous.  Then my old friend from New York approached me and asked me what I would take for the rest of the bottles.  I said $10,000 and he countered with $8,000.  He and two of his friends from New York were interested in the collection because they all collected different spirits and there were plenty of what each of them wanted.  I countered with an offer of $8,000 and they take possesion of the bottles right there at the show or $9,000 and I would cover the shipping to New York.  They chose the $8,000 and it was the wrong decision.  They each gave me a check for one third of the $8,000 but before I consumated the deal, I called my good friend Tony Natellin in New York to ask him if he knew the other two guys and if their checks were good.  Tony gave them the "thumbs up" and I consumated the deal.

Then the trouble began.  The fellows loaded up the bottles in our U-Haul and we took them to the airport and they had sky caps unload the bottles at the airline they were flying.  There were about 70 boxes left.  I am guessing that they bought about 8,000 bottles that day.  We then went to return the U-Haul truck and took a taxi back to the airport  It took us about two hours to do all of this.  By the time we got back to the airport. Lo and Behold, there were the guys still trying to find an airline that would take the boxes of bottles as freight.  As it turned, none of them would.  One of the guys owned a business in New York that had a truck and he ended up sending his truck and one of his employees on a round trip from New York to Chicago and back to bring the bottles home.  It cost them more than $1,000 to do this.

The final result......
$17,000 loan paid back in 10 days.  No interest paid.
$3,000 profit
1,100 great bottles added to my collection.
Many other collectors found bottles for their collections that were extremely hard to  find.

All in all, a real success story.

I am not encouraging anyone else to do something this crazy but sometimes you just get lucky.  And have a great wife!

See you next time.

I Need Your Help

Hello out there.  If you are reading my blogs and enjoy them, I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment.  It is important for me to know if this is an interesting endeavor to collectors out there or if I am just writing for myself.   It is fun for me to write my thoughts and memories about the hobby, but it is a lot of work if I am just doing it for myself.

Thanks.

John
http://www.minivodkaguy.com/

How Collecting Has Changed Through The Years

Collecting mini bottles has really changed through the years.  I am sure that there must have been collectors of mini bottles before the Prohibition Era but there are not a lot of records avalilable to confirm.  I believe that mini bottle collecting started after Prohibition ended.  It was then that several new distilleries sprang up and created brands of whiskey with beautiful labels, even on their mini bottles.  States like Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, Illinois, California and Tennessee were the states that had most of the distilleries at the time.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog, there were only a few states that sold mini liquor bottles.

One of the states that did sell mini's, had probably the premier liquor store for buying mini's after Prohibition ended.  That was a store in Miami called Manny's Liquors.  Manny had bottles for sale from all over the world, including Cuba.  Cuba produced many beautiful mini rums, including the famous Bacardi label, which ultimately moved to Florida.  I was able to find a lot of memorabilia from Manny's, including a few price lists.  The list was incredible with so many mini bottles available for sale.  California was also a mecca for mini bottles.  You could buy mini whiskey bottles in drug stores in those days.  But as I said in an earlier blog, California had to stop selling mini bottles in 1942 because of the war.  But for those 10 years, there were many beautiful mini whiskey bottles produced and they are coveted by collectors today.  Some of them have sold for as much as $300 in recent years.  Some of the states that did sell mini bottles only sold them through state controlled stores.  Other states only sold them in bars when you would order a drink.  It was difficult to find mini bottles in those days unless you were lucky enough to live in a state that sold them.

As time went by, the hobby began to grow.  The problem was, however, that most collectors did not know that there were other collectors out there because there were no means of communicating or of even knowing about other collectors.  I have found records that show that a national mini bottle club was formed in the late 1940's but that it did not last very long.   In the 1950's, a few collectors again found each other and began communicating with each other.  By the 1960's, there were probably 100 known collectors in the US.  One of the problems about our hobby is that there are still to this day, many collectors who prefer to remain anonymous and just collect on their own.  The internet has helped them to remain relatively anonymous.  By the middle to late 1960's, several local mini bottle clubs began to form and newsletters and magazines began to appear.  In the 1970's. a collector from Texas named Bob Snyder published a series of three books that showed pictures of mini bottles in full color with descriptions.  This was really a big event in the hobby.  Collectors now had something to aim for. 

What collectors did before the internet was to visit local antique shops and flea markets searching for mini bottles.  Other than buying new mini bottles from a shop in those states that sold them, this was really the only way to find some of those older mini bottles, unless you were able to make a trade or purchase from another collector.  But that was not a common method.  I can remember attending a flea market at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in the 1970's and finding a Schafer and Vater Gold Miner mini and being very excited.  It was my first flea market find.

In the 1960's, several of us Southern Californians started the Liliputian Miniature Bottle Club.  Like other bottle clubs that started up, we would hold a meeting every month and we would all bring bottles for swap or purchase and one person would volunteer to be a speaker and talk briefly about a special bottle that they had in their collection.  They could talk about a bottle that was unique or tell the story of how they acquired the bottle or something about the distillery or whatever they wanted.  It was always fascinating to me to hear how some bottles were acquired.

As the years went by, more and more states began selling mini bottles and the hobby grew.  More and more communications became available between collectors and the Midwest Miniature Bottle Club began their annual mini bottle show.  That was another bench mark for the hobby because for the first time, it brought a large group of collectors together from not only the US but from foreign countries as well.  People got to finally meet people that they had heard about or did a swap with.  We just celebrated the 31st anniversay of the show this year.  It is still growing strong.

Then, in the 1990's came the internet.  This has probably had more impact on the hobby than anything that ever came before it.  Now, mini bottles, new and old, became available to collectors all over the world.  For advanced collectors, older and more rare bottles became available.  For newbies, fascinating bottles from Europe became available.  And for collectors with modest collections, bottles they had been looking for became available.  It has changed the hobby drastically.  People now do not need to leave their homes to buy mini bottles.

Also, more and more international mini bottle clubs are beginning to hold shows that are similar to MMBC show.  Last year, there was a show in Spain.  Next year there will be a second show in Sicily by the Italian collectors.  There is a show in Russia every year.  More and more Americans are attending these shows.  So the hobby is really becoming one big international family.  I have been collecting since the early 1960's and I am thrilled by the growth of the hobby and look forward to all the new things to come in future years.

See you next time.  Until then, happy collecting.

Buying And Selling Mini Bottle Collections

This is a topic that has been discussed as long as people have been collecting mini bottles.  There are no perfect answers as to which is the best way to buy or sell a collection.  There is just a lot of history on how many collectors have done it over the years.

The first scenario is the one is which a family member who has collected some number of mini bottles has passed away and his family doesn't know what to do with his mini bottles since none of them are interested in them.  They have no idea if the bottles are worth anything and they do not know any other mini bottle collectors.  In this day and age, they usually turn to Google to see if they can find an answer.  Or they might put them up for sale on some web site like Craigslist or Ebay.  In some cases, some member of the family has a little familiarity with the bottles just from hearing Dad or Grandpa talking about them on many ocasions.  They might have a name of a fellow collector that they can turn to for some answers.

One of the problems in selling a collection is the fact that many of the people, who were not the collector, selling collections is that they tend to think the collection is worth more than it is.  Unless you have a spectacular collection, the collection as a whole, has less value than the sum of it's parts.  By this I mean, to a buyer, the collection may be worth 50 cents a bottle to buy the entire collection.  So, if you have 100 mini bottles, the collection may be worth $50 to the buyer.  On the other hand, the collection may have some old whiskies from the 1930's, as an example, that are worth $25 a piece.  The seller might be better off to sell the bottles individually than the collection as a whole.  Bottles like Johnnie Walker, Jim Beam, Smirnoff, Bacardi and the other popular brands, are not worth much more than 25 cents, if that.  The reason being that these mini bottles are sold everywhere in the world and have been for 60 years.  Every collector has them, even newbies because they can buy them at almost every liquor store and liquor outlet.  And, also bottles like liqueurs, cordials, aperitifs, digestives and wines have very little value unless you can find one of the few collectors who specialize in these types of spirits.  I say few, mostly European and South American collectors, because these are the most prolific types of spirits found around the world.  Every collector begins his or her collecting by collecting these bottles and then find themselves with so many of these types of bottles that they have no more room to display them.  Then, most collectors make the big decision about specializing in one type or one brand of spirits.  This not only gives them more room to display their collection but it also gives them a more reasonable chance to ever collect everything in that type or brand of spirit.  These collectors are called specialists.

When you are thinking about selling your collection if you are not the collector, you must understand that the biggest market out there is the specialist market.  If you have a bottle or bottles that a specialist needs, you will certainly maximize your return on the bottle.  However, specialists are not interested in buying the entire collection of 100 bottles if they only want 4 bottles.  I have bought collections like that many times in my life and now have over 1000 bottles I don;t want, just because I ended up with 50 or 60 or more bottles I did not want because I wanted 4 or 6 bottles from that collection.  I stopped buying collections 20 years ago.  Having said that, I should tell you that there is a market out there of new collectors who are still trying to collect everything and are looking for bargains.  For these collectors, it is best if you as the seller would put together a group of the not so popular types of spirits I mentioned above and put them on Ebay as a group of maybe 20 or 30 bottles and start the auction at a low price and see what happens.  If a newbie can get 20 or 30 mini bottles, regardless of their spirit make up, for $10 plus shipping, they think that is a real bargain and you can get at least a little pay back on the not so popular bottles.  The bottles to put on Ebay by themselves are whiskies, cognacs, vodkas, gins, rums, tequila's, beers and figural bottles.  However, avoid the common brand names.  Include those with the bottle groups.

I must also say that there are still buyers out there who are willing to buy entire collections if the price is right.  Remember that if you want to sell the entire collection at one time, the value of the collection is probably worth $1 or less per bottle, unless as I mentioned earlier, you have an a really great collection.  One place you can try to find a buyer for your collection is the Midwest Miniature Bottle Club.  Many of it's members are still interested in buying collections. You can contact them at: miniaturebottles.com or Google Midwest Miniature Bottle Collectors to get more information.

I hope I have given you enough information to get started in selling your unwanted mini bottles.  Contact me if you have any questions.

That's all for now.  See you next time.

The Search For The Elusive Russian Smirnov Mini Vodka

Before I write about buying and selling collections, I wanted to share this story with you.  I am sure that most of you, at least you mini vodka collectors are aware of the Black label Smirnoff mini vodka, of which there are two versions.  The rarest version is the one that says Made In Russia, while the more common one says Made In Moscow.  These bottles are made by the Pierre Smirnoff Vodka Company of Hartford, Connecticut.  Niether of these is the elusive Russian Smirnov I am talking about.  The elusive Russian Smirnov mini vodka is from the Peter Arsenyvich Smirnov company in Moscow.  The families are related but they split early in the 20th century.

The story begins with my early visits to Moscow in in the early 1990's.  As my dealers and distributors began to learn of my passion for mini vodka bottles, I began to hear from them about a Russian Smirnov vodka company that was located somewhere in Moscow and was thought to have made a miniature vodka exactly the same as their big bottle.  I began to search in all my usual haunts for this bottle and could never find it.  A few of the shop owners told me that there never was a miniature of their vodka ever made.  It did not discourage me.  I continued my hunt.  I could find no listing in a telephone directory or on the internet for a Smirnov vodka company anywhere in Moscow.  Even my dealers and distributors in Moscow could not help me locate the factory or headquarters office.  This went on for five years.  After all these years, Marriott opened a couple of hotels in Moscow and I started to stay at one on them on my trips to Moscow.  After a few trips I got to know the concierge pretty well and one day we were talking about some particular shop that I was looking for that sold miniature bottles that someone had told me about.  That led to a conversation about my hobby of collecting miniature bottles and especially mini vodkas.  Which, of course, led to the eternal question of Smirnov vodka.  Lo and behold, the concierge told me he knew about such a place in Moscow.  I asked him if he any contact information for this company and he said to come back tomorrow and perhaps he could have some information.  I was really excited.  After five years of searching, I finally found someone who might be able to help me.

The next day I went down to see him and sure enough.  He had a telephone number for me.  He said that this brother in law worked at this factory.  When I went to Russia, I usually took my Russian engineer with me.  He was originally a radion technician in the Ukraine when I met him and he was quite a good radio man.  I was able to help him come to the US and go to work for my company.  I had him call this number and ask for the marketing manager and see if we could arrange a visit.  After a lengthy phone call with the marketing manager, it was finally settled that we could come and visit.  The clincher for the visit was when my engineer told him that a "very important vice president from a big American company wanted to visit."

The appointment was set for the next day at 10:00AM.  We got directions and the next day we took off for our visit.  We rode the beautiful Moscow subway to the Octoberskay station as directed and then started our walk to the factory.  We got near to where the factory was supposed to be and we could not see any signs for the factory.  We walked around for thirty minutes looking for the factory.  We had seen one big building with no windows and an 8 foot high metal fence all around it.  I told Stan, my engineer that this had to be it, even though there was no sign to indicate it.  We walked up to the guard shack at the only gate into the facility and Stan asked if this was the Smirnov distillery.  After a long series of questions, the guard finally made a phone call and confirmed that we did indeed have an appointment and allowed us to enter.  We got to the receptionist's desk and Stan explained who we were and that we had an appointment with the marketing manager.  After a few minutes, we were told that Leonid, the marketing manage was not able to meet with his.  Stan got really upset and got into a heated discussion with the receptionist when a well dressed man walks in carrying a briefcase and inquires as to what is the problem.  I recognized immediately that he was someone important and I softly mentioned this to Stan.  It turns out that he was the managing director of the company, Dimitry Sarvichkin.  He immediately, upon learing what was going on, invited us in to his office.  He spoke no English, so the conversation was one where Stan interpreted both ways.  Dima was very cordial and after a few minutes, he made a couple of phone calls, and within minutes someone came into his office with 6 miniature Smirnov vodkas.  The Holy Grail was finally in my hands.  I wish I knew how to add pictures to this post but I don;t.  You can see a picture of the Smirnov mini vodka on the opening page of my web site:  http://www.minivodkaguy.com/.  A few minutes after that, another person came into his office with something that looked a thick coffee table book.  After it was presented to me, I realized it was container box for a beautiful color coffee table book describing the history of the Smrinov/ff family.  It was loaded with great pictures and the text was in English.  Also included in the container, was a box that when open had three beautiful 100ml bottles of Smirnov vodka.  It was explained to me that both the mini and the 100ml were only given out at very important government social events and were never offered for sale.  So I considered myself very fortunate to have finally found the most elusive Smirnov mini vodka bottle after almost 6 years of searching.  Persistance paid off in this case.

By the way, the reason for no signage indicating who they were, as I am told, is that Moscow during the 1990's was a pretty wild place.  The switch from a socialist government/economy to a market economy was still taking shape and had not been fully defined by this time.  So many of the manufacturer's tried to keep as low a profile as they could so that the mafia and the tax police would have a more difficult time trying to find them and bother them for bribes and protection money.

Until next time, keep your eye out for that elusive bottle that you are looking for.

Mini Bottles Around The World

As I mentioned earlier, my travels around the world that started in 1992 and continued until 2002 when the company was sold and my job was eliminated, took me to more than 100 countries around the world.  In all my travels, I always made it a point to search for mini bottles.  After a few of faithful pursuit of mini bottles, my distributors finally began to get the idea that I was serious and they began looking for places where I could find mini's when I visited their country.  Too many of the countries I visited did not sell  or manufacture mini bottles.  Many of those countries did sell mini's but they were always the popular brands like Johnnie Walker or Jim Beam or Jack Daniels.  Some of the countries that were really gold mines for mini bottles were some of the European countries like Japan, Germany, England, Scotland, Estonia, Ukraine and Hungary.  I am sure I am leaving out many countries, but these are the ones I remember well.  I remember going to Old Town in Budapest and entering through the Wenceslaus Gate.  There was a liquor store a short way into Old Town.  This was a real gold mine for me.  It was probably  one of the great international shops I ever visited.  There were so many mini bottles in that shop, especially vodka.  I remember he was selling a mini vodka called T-34 and it had the Russian T-34 tank on the label.  He only had 6 of them and I bought all of them.  I have a good eye for mini bottles that will be hard to find in the future and I always try to buy 6 or 10 of those to bring back with me for other collectors.  I did that all over the world.  On several trips I brought back 150 - 200 mini bottles and never had a problem coming back through US Customs.  New York was always the easiest place for me to come back into the United States.  Atlanta could be tough sometimes.

I remember on one trip to Kiev in the Ukraine, I went to a regular place I always went to for buying mini's.  There weren't many places to buy mini's in Kiev so I always went to the same 3 or 4 places.  When I got to this place, I saw a bottle that looked interesting that I did not have.  When I bought the bottle, the alert sales clerk said she had more.  She then presented me with a pack of 5 mini vodkas.  Then I noticed that there were more packs on the shelf behind her.  When I asked her if I could see one of the packs behind her, I noticed that there were a couple of different labels in that pack.  I started to get excited and I asked her to see all the packs she had,  These were the Kazenkas.  I bought 57 bottles that day with about 30 different years.  For those of you who are not familiar with the Kazenkas, they are set of mini vodkas with a different lable for each year of the communist rule of the Soviet Union.  They also made some bottes with different labels and also made a few years with two different lables.  I was so excited that I sent an email message to my friend George Lisenko and told him about this great find.  I told him I was bringing a lot of duplicates back with me for him.  That trip I brought back 200 mini bottles and I was scared to death that US Customs would surely stop me and confiscate the bottles on my return.  The good news is that there was no problem and that gave me encouragement to do it again in the future, which I certainly did.  On my next visit to Kiev, I had one of my distributors locate the place where they made the Kazenka and take me to visit it.  That turned out to be an even bigger gold mine as I was able to find almost all of the labels I was missing.  I bought 120 bottles that day and brought back 180 mini bottles in total from that trip.

Kiev is also the place where I found the three Hetman mini vodkas.  The yellow, blue and white lables.  These are beautiful frosted glass window bottles.  There is a fourth Hetman with a red stripe that is made in Poland.  The Ukrainian Hetmans were discontinued in 1999.

France remains to this day, as an engima to me when it comes to collecting mini bottles.  They produce some of the most beautiful mini bottles in the world, but I have yet to ever find any of them in shops in France.  I cannot figure out where they sell them.  Fortunately for me, I have friends around the world that can find them and sell, trade or give them to me for which I am most thankful.

One of the most interesting bottles I ever found in my travels, is one I found in Nigeria.  Of all things, it was a tequila made in Nigeria called Woorm vodka(spelling is correct) and, of course, it had a worm in it.  They had three of them on the shelf and I bought all three of them.

Japan has always been a great place to buy mini's .  Just go the B-1 level in one of the many department stores to find mini's.  At least that is where they used to always be.  Since Japan has so many whiskey distillers, there were always many mini Japanese whiskies available for sale.  Many of them were done in really beautiful and distinct bottles and are great collector items.

I hope you enjoyed this brief trip around the mini bottle world.  Next time I will talk about buying and selling collections.  Many people through the years have asked my advise on that subject and I will give you my thoughts on it.

Meeting Mr. Putin

In the summer of 1994, The Goodwill Games, which were like the Olympic Games and were held two years before the next Olympic Games, were being held in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Because some of the venues were being held 50 or 60 miles outside of St. Petersburg, the Traffic Police needed a communications system that allowed them to talk to some of their people who would be stationed in the villages along the route to the particular venue.  The reason was that many bus loads of people would be passing through the villages on their way to the venue.  In these small villages, most of the homes are built along the road and all commerce takes place on the road through the village.  People were moving herds of animals, moving push carts, riding bicycles, and so on.  The Traffic Police needed to clear the road 5 minutes before the busses would be coming through.  The radio system they had in St. Petersburg would not cover all of these villages.  Our distributor in Moscow sold the Traffic Police one of our systems so that they could either make telephone calls or radio calls to handle the clearing of the roads.  The system worked very well for them and no problems occured.  I was invited to come to St. Petersburg in the Fall of 1994 to meet with the Traffic Police Communications Manager.

My distributor from Moscow and I took the overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg.  It was called the Red Arrow and it leaves Moscow at 11:00PM and arrives in St. Petersburg at 7:00AM.  It was very comfortable and we had a sleeping compartment so we slept all night.  In the morning, upon our arrival, we were met by the Communications Manager and had breakfast.  He then took us down to one of the canals.  For those of you who may not know, St. Petersburg is a city of canals, just like Venice.  Some of the canals are open to the public and some are closed to the public.  The St. Petersburg police have several boats that patrol these canals.  He took us on one of the police boats.  We waited on board the boat for about 45 minutes.  I asked my distributor what was going on.  He spoke good English by the way.  He said that he did not know.  After a few more minutes, a taxi pulled up and an attractive woman and young man about 10 years old got out.  It turns out that this was the communications guy's girlfriend and her son.  He had told them that if he ever had a chance, he would take them out on the boat.  I was his chance.  Having a Vice President from an American Company who had helped out with the Goodwill Games was a good reason for him to be able to have access to the boat.  We then proceeded to tour the canals....all the canals.  It was fantastic!   I was able to see parts of St. Petersburg from the water that most people would never see.

After the boat ride, we were supposed to meet the Mayor of St. Petersburg at 10:00AM.  His name was Anatoly Sobzcak.  He was an old line communist and he was assassinated a few years later.   As it turned out, he was unavailable, so we met with the Deputy Mayor instead.  We proceeded to the Deputy Mayor's office and it was something to behold.  While we were in the outer office waiting for Deputy Mayor, I noticed how high the ceiling was.  It must have been 15 feet high.  There were two big cathedral type doors going into the Deputy Mayor's office that must have been 12 feet high.  I had never seen anything like it before.  The mayor's assistant finally got the call for us to come in.   The big doors opened and the Deputy Mayor was there to greet us.  He invited us in and we took our seats.  The Deputy Mayor spoke good English but switched between Russian and English.  He then presented us with a signed copy of a coffee table book about the Goodwill Games.  Our meeting lasted about 15 minutes and then we were on our way out.  Oh, by the way, the Deputy Mayor's name was Vladimir Putin.   Yes!   The same Vladimir Putin.  Mr. Putin is originally from St. Petersburg and from early on, he was a protege of Mr. Sobzcak. 

The fact  of the matter is that I did not know who the Deputy Mayor was at the time.  It was not until years later when I saw him on TV for the first time, did I realize who he was.  You can imagine my surprise.   The bad news is that I cannot find that coffee table book that was presented to me.  What a shame.  But even so, I still have fond memories of my 1994 visit to St. Petersburg.

Until next time, have a great day.

I Sold All My Mini Scotch Bottles......Now What?

After the truck drove away with all my mini scotch bottles, I began to have second thoughts.  Did I do the right thing?  As I thought about it, the answer was yes.  I would never get an offer like that again.  3,000 mini bottles for $25,000.  I did the right thing.

As I reviewed my remaining collection, I had about 500 American whiskies, 300 vodkas, 300 rums and an odd assortment of couple of thousand bottles of other types of spirits.  I decided to start to collecting vodkas and whiskies, including starting a new collection of scotch whisky minis.  I only knew one other serious vodka collector and that was my friend George Lisenko.  As it turned out, it was a good decision because in 1992, I took a job in the San Francisco Bay area with a company that was owned by an old friend of mine.  He had a new product he was going to be manufacturing and he wanted me to come out and become his sales manager to take this new product to market.  It was essentially a "poor man's cellular" product.  By that I mean, it was a two way radio system that used a repeater that would allow people that were 100 miles away to talk to each other.  When you connected a phone line to the repeater, you would have dial tone and could make telephone calls with a radio.  It was different from cellular because you had to push the button when you wanted to talk and release the button to listen.  Cellular phones, even though they are radios, can talk and listen at the same time because they are full duplex.  Two way radios are half duplex and therefore you must push to talk and release to listen.  There was no market for this product in the developed countries where cellular was established.  However, in the third world countries and developing nations, there was not a good telephone infrastructure nor was cellular well established.  As a result, I had great success in these countries selling my product.  I would travel internationally almost every month to some place in the world.  Russia became my biggest market.  Between 1993 and 2002, I traveled to Russia almost thirty times.  For the first 7 years of my visits to Russia, the Russians thought I was crazy.  They could not believe someone was actually interested in 50ml bottles of vodka.  They were interested in one or two liter bottles of vodka.   Needless to say, I found many, many great Russian mini vodka bottles on my visits.  I never knew or heard of any Russian mini bottle collectors until 2000.  By 2010, there were 100's of mini bottle collectors in Russia.  My vodka collection really grew during those 9 years of visiting places like Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and other countries around the world.  I discovered that only the state where Bombay, now Mumbai, is located sold miniature bottles in the entire country of India.  I found mini vodkas in Hanoi, Viet Nam, in a flea market, in a sellers kiosk nestled way inside the flea market, away from the ever watchful eyes of the authorities.   I found a liquor shop in Melbourne Australia that had the only large collection of mini bottles for sale in the entire country.  I spent a lot of time on my trips looking for mini bottles and I had my distributors helping me by taking me to places they knew.

Perhaps the most interesting mini bottle story is the one I had in Namibia, in West Africa.  This is one of the greatest countries I have ever visited.  Very enlightened government.  Just before dinner one evening, my distributor in Windhoek, took me to his personal liquor store to inquire about mini bottles.  The proprietor was a Portuguese fellow and very friendly.  He offered us a beer and as we were drinking our beers, a fellow walked into the shop and I was introduced to him.  He was a black man, well dressed in a very nice business suit.   As we talked about things in general and what I was doing in Windhoek, the question of what he did finally got asked.  It turned out he was the Minister of Tourism and Business Development for Namibia.  After about 20 minutes of our conversation, another very large, well dressed black man came into the shop.  We were introduced and after a few minutes of small talk, and the question of what he did was asked, it turns out that he was the defense minister for Namibia.  In less than an hour of visiting this liquor shop, I met two high officials in the government of Namibia.  It was a really interesting visit.  And I got some nice mini's to boot.

Next time, I will talk about an interesting Russian meeting in 1994.

How I Chose My Specialty

As I mentioned before, I had reached a point in my collection that I had no more room in the house to display my bottles.  So, I had to make a choice of what type of spirit to specialize in.  After I bought the collection from the friend of my father's dentist, I saw that it contained mostly Scotch Whisky mini's.  I also had about 100 scotch mini's that I had bought myself in stores.  Did I mention that in the early 60's, only 16 states were selling mini bottles.  Fortunately, Wisconsin was one of them.  Which really helped me add to my collection.  I made the decision to collect mini scotch bottles.  At that point I had about 500 scotch whiskey miniature.  Most of my collection up to that point consisted of liqueurs, cordials, wines, brandies and cognacs, whiskies, rums, gins and other miscellaneous bottles, but most liqueurs and cordials.  And all this time, about 4 years into collecting, I thought that my neighbors in Pacific Beach, my dentist's friend and I were the only three crazy people in the world who collected mini liquor bottles. 

I went on thinking that until 1969 when I moved to Los Angeles.  Since they did not sell mini's in California anymore(since 1942) I had to go to flea markets and antique stores to hunt for mini bottles.  On one trip to an antique store in Torrance, the dealer said to me "Oh, another one of you looking for those little bottles."  I was amazed.  I said "really?"  I asked if he by any chance knew the name of the other crazy guy.  He said "Yes, he left his card here someplace.  Oh, here it is."   The name on the card was David Spaid.  David lived in Torrance and had also been collecting mini bottles for several years.  I called him and he came over to my house and looked at my collection and told me a lot of information about collecting mini liquor bottles. He opened up a whole new world for me.  He told me about many other collectors, about newsletters about Bob Snyder's books.  I was amazed.  There were several other collectors living in Southern California at the time and very soon after my meeting with David, we started having monthly meetings of collectors and within a year, we started the Lilliputian Bottle Club in Southern California.  My mini scotch collection grew to about 3,300 different mini scotch bottles.  It was one of the biggest mini scotch collections in the country at the time.  I finally sold my scotch collection in 1988 to a collector from Scotland who had 22,000 different mini scotches at the time.  He owned a hotel in the highlands and had all  of his bottles on display.  I had 200 bottles he did not have.  These were bottles from the 1930's in the years after prohibition ended.  There were several new distilleries that sprang up and they would import malt scotch whisky from Scotland in barrels and then add grain whiskey and bottle it at their distillery and sell it as blended scotch whiskey.  They would put gorgeous labels on the bottles, both big and mini.  These bottles were never exported and therefore were never available to overseas collectors.  He made me an offer I could not refuse.  I packed them up in 80 banana boxes and left them on the driveway of my home on the appointed day, and sure enough, a truck pulled up as scheduled, loaded the boxed and away they went.

Next time, I will talk about what I did next.  See you then.

What Typically Happens with New Collectors

When an adult decides to collect something, most of the time, they are very enthusiastic and want to collect every item in the area of their collection, that exists.  When I decided to start collecting mini bottles at that liquor store in Las Vegas, I was filled with that same enthusiasm.  After we got back to Wisconsin, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Wisconsin sold mini bottles.  I started to buy every mini bottle I could find with the small amount of money I had available for discretionary spending at that time.  Our second child was born in 1965 and I was earning a whopping $88 week so I couldn't buy too many, but the collection started growing.

Also, in 1995, my father was talking with his dentist about my crazy hobby.  By the way, I was sure that I must be the only crazy person in the world who was collecting mini liquor bottles.  His dentist mentioned that his neighbor had some of those little bottles and would like to sell them.  My dad told me about and I contacted the guy.  He had 500 bottles and a display cabinet and he was willing to sell them to me for $200.  I was ecstatic!  I talked it over with my wife and I borrowed the money from my dad and bought the collection.  I now had close to 900 mini bottles I had been collecting just over two years.  And, a display case to display most of them.  I was collecting every kind of spirit available....whiskey, gin, vodka, rum, tequila, cognac, cordials, liqueurs, beer, figurals and wines.  It made no difference to me.  As long as they were mini bottles, it was okay with me.  As I filled up the first display cabinet, I began to put mini bottles on shelves, on table tops, in book shelves or anywhere I could find a flat spot.  A few years went by and I had really grown my collection.  I was up to about 4000 bottles when I realized that there must be 1,000's and 1,000's of mini bottles out there in the world and I did not have room for all of them.  I would have to specialize.  This is the point that most collectors reach somewhere along the way.  They have no room for their growing collection, no matter what it is.  My wife is a quilter.  Any of you who have a quilter in the family know that there is no such thing as too much fabric.  We have fabric all over our house.  She has not gotten to that point yet:)

Next time I will talk about what I decided to do. 

How It All Got Started

My name is John and I have been collecting miniature bottles since 1963.  It all started when I got married in September of 1962.  I was in the Navy stationed in San Diego and I got married in my hometown of Milwaukee Wisconsin.  I took my new bride and we drove back to San Diego and took an apartment in Pacific Beach, a suburb of San Diego.  I still had 6 months to go in the Navy.  Our next door neighbors in Pacific Beach were a retired couple who had traveled around the world and had picked up souvenir miniature liquor bottles from some of the countries that they visited.  When I first saw them displayed in their apartment, I was fascinated.  They did not sell mini bottles in California at that time.  They did sell mini bottles in California from the end of Prohibition in 1933 until 1942.  The authorities discovered in 1942 that defense plant workers were taking the little bottles in their lunch pails to work with them and having a few nips on the job.  This was affecting their work, so the state stopped the sale of mini bottles until the 1970's.

In any event, in April of 1963 when I was discharged from the Navy, my wife and I had saved some money to have a big in Las Vegas on our way back home to Milwaukee.  When we got to Las Vegas, most of the action was still downtown as the strip had not really been built up in 1963.  I found a parking place on the street in front of a liquor store just by chance.  In the window of the liquor store was a full display of miniature bottles.  I yelled at my wife, scaring her half to death, "Honey, look at all those miniature bottles!  We are in heaven!"  I immediately got out of the car and went into the liquore and proceeded to spend $200 of the $300 we had saved for our big night in Las Vegas.  The bottles cost anywhere from 25 cents to 75 cents and so you can imagine how many bottles we had to find room for in our Volkswagen bug to take home with us.  We never did get our BIG night in Las Vegas. 

That is how it all got started.  Now, almost 50 years later, I am still at it.  I now have over 12,000 mini bottles but that is not the important number.  Of those 12,000, over 3,000 of them are mini vodkas from all over the world.  Over 3,000 are whiskies from all over the world.  And then there are smaller collections of gins, tequilas, beer, rum and figural bottles.  I also collect pre pro whiskey miniature bottles with paper labels and also clay jugs, which preceded the glass bottles as give aways from taverns and distillers before the turn of the 19th century.  You can see all of these bottles on my web site:   http://www.minivodkaguy.com/