His most expensive bottle is a commemorative Charles and Diana scotch at about $300 to $400, some bottles cost between $20 and $30, but many were had for less. He knows the miniature bottle hot spots including Kentucky, Tennessee, Nevada and California as well as miniature bottle dead zones like the Deep South.īaron won’t say what the collection cost, mostly because he never kept track. Italy is a good place, but some other countries don’t have anything at all. “When we were on vacation the best place to buy them was Scotland,” he says. Tiny blown glass figurines from Italy are like little works of art.īaron purchased the bottles in his travels throughout North American, Europe and Australia. A bottle of Bols, from the Netherlands, has a tiny mechanical ballerina ready to twirl in her liquid home. Some have music mechanisms and play little tunes when you wind them up. Kennedy, monkeys, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, dogs, African animals, Flintstone-style dinosaurs, scotch bottles representing many of the tradition family tartans, leprechauns, generals of the Confederacy, and on and on.Īll the bottles are unopened and presumably still hold the hooch – unless they’ve lost it to the angels. There are too many to list here, but my eyes were drawn to bottles shaped like outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, Mounties, cowboys, horses, playing cards, chess sets, President John F. Miniature liquor bottle for monkey shines. We check out the collection, largely stored behind glass to cut down on the dusting. “You could buy many of them for 50 cents in California and they are one of a kind.”
“I bought many of these little miniatures in drug stores in California,” Baron says. They were used as countertop advertising in stores, enticing consumers to sip a new scotch, bourbon, gin, rum, tequila or a wide variety of liqueurs. Many were expertly hand-painted in long-abandoned factories. Instead, they are intricate and tiny figurines. “It was just innocently by chance and it just grew on me after a while.”īaron’s glass bottles come in every shape and colour, but few are shaped like actual bottles. “Most people expect a dinky, marginal collection of 100 bottles or so, but this is something like out of a museum.” Custom-made oak curio cabinets line the walls. He takes me to a good-sized, immaculately organized room in his basement to start the tour. “And I’m not fan of scotch or any of that beer is my favourite.
“I never smoked in my entire life,” the retired food broker says.
Over the course of his eight decades, Baron has collected more than 2,600 tiny bottles and more than 6,000 matchbook covers. But you know what? I wasn’t disappointed in the least. Still it took a little more prodding to get him to say admit that his collections – indeed vast collections – consisted of miniature liquor bottles and matchbook covers.
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He certainly knew how to pique my interest and I was hooked by his enthusiasm. He had insisted over the phone that I would be surprised by what I found if I came to his house to investigate – even before telling me what he actually collected. For a man who has no interest in hard liquor and has never smoked cigarettes, it could be said that Orest Baron has a peculiar taste in collecting.
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