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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 cashier’s check for $17,000 and take possession 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 1,100 bottles for myself.
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

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