Elvin Moody Bottle Collection pictures surface!
11 April 2013
Hi Ferd,
Back in 1982, when I was pretty new to bottle collecting, I had the priviledge to visit Elvin Moody and see his fantastic bottle collection. What a pleasure it was to visit with Elvin and his wife Cherie. Seeing his amazing collection is something that I will never forget. He was very gracious and let me take as many pictures as as wanted. The lighting wasn’t the best, but you can see some great bottles lining the shelves of his bottle room.
He told us that the day before our visit the cleaning lady decided to do a little dusting in the bottle room. Elvin had a couple boxes on the floor from the last bottle show he attended. Rather than pick up the boxes to move them, she just gently kicked them accross the floor. Six bottles in the boxes got damaged/broken! Elvin, laughing as he told us, said he really didn’t get mad at her, but he told her she did not have to dust in the bottle room any more!!!
I’m sure glad I went to see Elvins bottles when I did as he sold off his collection in 1983. Here are some of the better photos, I hope you can use them.
PS – I wish I took a better photo of Elvins’ cobalt fish and I included on photo of his flask collection too. Thanks for the great bottle site you have for all of us to enjoy.
Marty Kuzmic
Marty: Thank you so very much! These pictures are stunning and a real missing link in my photo archives of the great collections. This is just spectacular. I recognize so many of the bottles. Some in my collection and many in others. A truly valuable resource. I will refer to these pictures often.
Killer Bitters collection. I was there in ’76; traded the MONOPOLE bitters to Elvin for a small green H.P HERB. I was a newbie; a kid in a candy shop and didn’t hardly have a clue what I was looking at. I would say from these pics that Elvin’s collection eclipsed the later assembled Feldmann collection. I don’t even remember seeing most of these great Bitters!
I was in awe when I saw Elvins’ bottle room. The rainbow of colors was just amazing. I took the photos with 35mm slide film and I recently had them converted to a DVD disc. I’m glad they came out so well and I’m glad that many others will be able to enjoy seeing them on Ferds’ great site.
I was a friend with Elvin, and Sherry, and got to see his collection several times. I was with him when he purchased the Plows bitters at a Skinners auction. Elvin also had a fabulous flask collection which included a cobalt Columbia flask. Elvins big start came when he bought Tip Boyds collection and went on to make it the greatest Bitters collection of its time. When he got the Blue fish there were those who tried to tell him it was a repro, but Elvin knew better. My favorite bitters was a green American Life Cabin., Elvin really liked it to. Elvin Moody was always a gentleman and I am blessed to know him personally. In fact, I am blessed to have known so many wonderful bottle collectors. Gary Beatty FOHBC Treasure
Great to hear from other “old timers” to put some of the puzzle pieces together. Just chatted with JOE KRAY, close friend of the late CHRIS BATTDORF. Joe verified that Chris bought Elvin’s Bitters collection in it’s entirety. Moody bitters not “needed”(You’ve got to be kidding!) by Chris were then offered to Joe, followed by next-in-line- TED KRIST. Where the “H” was I?!
Jeff – nice to see you get as excited as I do with all of this historical bitters information. All missing links for me. I think it would be fun and a highly educational exercise to lock us in a room and with a large, posted white piece of paper and colored markers. Then we create a timeline and related notations of all of the great bitters collections with parallel marks for some of the great examples that have changed hands over the decades. With you encyclopedic mind, this would be fun! You game?
Ferdinand- I’m game; always fun to follow a bottle and provenance is an important piece of a bottle example’s significance AND value. I will say however, I myself do not have all the pieces of any given puzzle(collection sale). I don’t hear all the “poop” after a sale goes down.