Empties Are Better

FRED AND CATHY BUSICK, Route 7, Box 18, Burlington, N.C. 27215. I have Bluejay, Robin, Woodpecker, Elks, Baseball, Las Vegas. I want Burmese Cat, 70 Exc., Tombstone, Amvets, Flower Basket, St. Louis Arch.

The advertisement appears concise and to the point. Only thing is: What point? Are the Busicks alerting a bookie to their late-starting favorites at Pimlico? Notifying fellow CIA agents of the terms of a prisoner-exchange operation? Not at all. The message appeared in the monthly publication of the National Jim Beam Bottle and Specialties Club; the Bluejay is a ceramic decanter, as is the St. Louis Arch, and the Busicks themselves are two of the estimated 50,000 Americans currently engaged in what is perhaps the country's fastest-growing hobby--bottle collecting.

Hapless Gamblers. Not filled bottles, but empties. The fancy packaging (animal, bird and political figurines), initiated in the mid-'50s by the James B. Beam Distilling Co. as a spur to liquor sales, boosted sales all right, but not just by drinkers. The bottles turned out to be every bit as intoxicating, so much so that a company called Grenadier is now in business primarily to serve "the Connoisseur Collector with the finest examples of porcelain soldier figurines [bottles] available anywhere in the U.S." Moreover, unlike their contents, the bottles have a long-term value: Jim Beam's hapless gambler, clad only in top hat and barrel, sold in 1958 for $8 filled; today, empty, it commands at least $400.

Antique bottles are also in demand. California's leading bottle maniac, retired Home Builder Albert Cembura, remembers his 1960 discovery of a turn-of-the-century still, complete with hundreds of bottles. "I was fascinated," says Cembura, "but when I went to the library, I found there was almost nothing written about bottles, so I decided to do something about it." Doing something, Cembura's way, consisted of founding antique-bottle clubs, as well as a separate organization for modern-bottle collectors ("The oldtimers," Cembura says, "are snobbish. They are only interested in bottles 60 years old or older"). Cembura's pioneer "Jim Beam Bottle Clubs of the U.S." boasted a membership of ten in 1966; today there is a national network of more than 30 affiliates, with an active total membership of well over 15,000.

Big Bertha. Bulletins and magazines alert collectors to sales, trades and finds in the bottle market. Dubuque, Iowa's weekly Antique Trader, for example, regularly carries at least 15 pages devoted to the fad; a recent issue listed such hot items as Ezra Brooks' Big Bertha ($25), Beam's Gold Fox ($95), Dr. Seth Arnold's cough killer ($2), Dr. Fenner's Kidney & Backache Cure ($14) and a (misspelled) bottle of Kalamasoo heavy blob soda ($9.50). Of the moderns, Avon cologne and perfume bottles are most popular; an International Avon Collectors organization, headquartered in Mesa, Ariz., informs members of new issues. Novice collectors can seek guidance in books like Collecting Bottles, which covers the field, or Fruit Jars, which gets down to such specifics as how to tell a double safety from an acme.

Surprisingly, the most expensive bottles are of comparatively recent vintage. Each of the 117 Commemorative Centennial gift bottles issued by Chicago's First National Bank in 1964 now sells for more than $2,000. And the Spiro Agnew bottle, ordered by the G.O.P. National Committee and presented to contributors at a $150-a-plate dinner in Washington, D.C., last year, today commands a cool $2,800. Al Cembura, who sees the fad supplanting the ebbing enthusiasm for coin and gun collecting, insists happily that "this is just the beginning."

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