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/