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Gregory Scott Given holds history in his hands — and, likely, about $5,000. That’s the value he estimates for a pristine 1890s whiskey bottle that he dug up not too long ago in the Martin County town of Hamilton. The glazed, green-tinted flask is so enchanting that you half expect a genie to materialize from its unstoppered opening, ready to grant three wishes.

Given proudly displays an 1890s whiskey bottle from Martin County, valued to be around $5,000. photograph by Charles Harris

Scott Given photograph by Charles Harris

Given would gladly accept. There are several elusive bottles he wishes he could get his hands on. Not that he hasn’t been trying. Given, who moved to Johnston County from New Mexico 13 years ago, has established himself as one of the most prolific bottle hunters and collectors in the state, if not the country. “I don’t know of anyone in the U.S. who is as avid as I am,” he says.

Just look around his store, Country Boy Antiques in Selma. His collection of rare and interesting bottles — most of which he dug up himself — numbers more than 35,000. Besides the whiskey bottles, scores of soda, apothecary, and milk bottles line the shelves, fill boxes, and spill out across the floor. They come in all shapes and sizes — in clear glass and prismatic shades of blue, green, and amber. And they all dazzle, examples of the mysterious alchemy between silica, limestone, soda ash, and fire.

• • •

For years, Given dug on the West Coast and in the desert Southwest, but since moving to North Carolina, his hunting grounds have been confined mostly to the South. In all that time, he’s only found a dozen or so whiskey bottles with the names of North Carolina towns on them, confirming their scarcity.

Other whiskey flasks in Given’s collection speak to an often-overlooked part of North Carolina’s tumultuous history with intoxicating spirits. At the turn of the 20th century, the temperance movement was making inroads across the country, most notably the South. By the late 1800s, some North Carolina towns and counties prohibited liquor sales. Others required all sales to be made through dispensaries. In 1909, the state outlawed alcohol altogether, predating national Prohibition by more than a decade.

Prior to Prohibition, some towns restricted liquor sales to dispensaries. Given’s North Carolina dispensary bottles — including ones from Clayton, Raleigh, Selma, and Greenville — are among his rarest. photograph by Charles Harris

The short-lived era of dispensaries was over, but whiskey bottles from those stores have fascinated collectors ever since. Because some of the dispensaries operated for only a few years, bottles embossed with a dispensary’s location are prized. The dispensary bottles Given owns — from Raleigh, Kinston, Louisburg, Selma, Greenville, and Clayton — represent some of the rarest in his collection.

As it turns out, Prohibition proved providential to future bottle collectors in another way. With liquor illegal, sales of soft drinks exploded. According to Given, hundreds of competitors entered a market dominated by Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, each with its own take on sugar and soda water concoctions. Today, historic bottles from those companies fetch big prices.

In fact, Given’s thirst for vintage soda bottles — especially Coke and the New Bern-born Pepsi — motivated him to put down stakes in the Tar Heel State. “A lot of the towns that have these rare Pepsi bottles are in North Carolina,” he explains. After researching communities, he chose Selma for its proximity to I-95 and its reputation for antiques stores. Country Boy Antiques fit right in.

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At Barn Shelter Antiques around the corner from Given’s place, Vernon Creech does a brisk business in vintage bottles known as “ACLs.” “ACL” stands for “applied color label,” and it represents an important evolution in soda bottle design that occurred in the 1930s. Brand names had previously been embossed directly into the glass. ACLs enabled bottlers to create distinctive, colorful labels more likely to attract the eye of a parched customer on a sultry summer day.

Creech and Given are kindred spirits when it comes to soda bottle collecting. “We both like local bottles,” Creech says. The most collectible vintage glass bottles — whether from a pharmacy, dairy, or soft drink maker — share a similar, distinctive feature: the embossed or imprinted name of the town where they were made.

Treasures found by Scott Given and his fellow collector Vernon Creech include bottles from Catawba Valley, Worley’s, and Sir Walter beverage companies. photograph by Matt Hulsman

In Siler City, Reitzel Beverage Co. produced Gold Dot Soda. Fayetteville’s Cape Fear Beverages featured a bagpiper on its bottles with the cheeky slogan, “Even a Scotchman likes it better than a nickel.” Boone Rock Bottling Co. in Spencer advertised its Boone Cola with an illustration of the famous frontiersman and the line, “A boon to health.” Major Cola Bottling Company in Winston-Salem advertised its Carolina Moon Dry Ginger Ale with “It’s blended. It’s splendid.”

Vernon Creech photograph by Charles Harris

Like Given, Creech has dedicated his life to bottle collecting, although, at 72, he’s given up the digging part of the profession.

Creech grew up on a farm in Selma. At 11 years old, he traded an arrowhead to his uncle for a blue jar. “It was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen,” Creech says, still smitten by the colored glass that sparked a lifetime fascination.

Given experienced a similar epiphany. As a teen, he had been searching for arrowheads along a lakeshore. Not having any luck, he started looking for lures, only to discover a few old Coca-Cola bottles along the way. He picked them up, washed them off, and displayed them on a windowsill at home. Sunlight played on the aqua-tinted glass. The graceful curves of the bottles began to draw him in. He didn’t know it then, but the course of his life was set.

In his early days of collecting, Given thought he was alone in his enthusiasm. “I literally thought I was the only person who liked bottles,” he says. An antiques dealer recommended he join a bottle club, and it’s there that he learned that there are thousands of bottle hunters — and that competition among them is fierce.

Applied color labels, or ACLs, allowed Boone Rock Bottling Co. in Spencer and Reitzel Beverage Co. in Siler City to advertise soft drinks like Boone Cola and Gold Dot Soda, respectively, with eye-catching colors and graphics. photograph by Matt Hulsman

“A lot of them mislead you so you can’t be as successful as they are,” Given says. “It’s literally treasure hunting. It’s like those movies where treasure hunters want to kill each other and have the gold just for themselves. It’s kind of like that for bottles.”

The secretive nature of bottle hunters is understandable. A dig at a successful site can yield finds worth thousands of dollars. Given recently sold a single soda bottle to a collector for $3,000: “It’s a bottle for a soda called ‘30 Below,’ and it’s the only one that’s ever been found in a 12-ounce size.”

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Given hunts for bottles about 100 days of the year, and each of his expeditions is planned with the care of an archaeological dig. In many ways, that’s exactly what it is. There are two areas where old bottles are most often found: At the site of former town and city trash dumps. And at the site of former privies.

Yes, outhouses. Before the advent of indoor plumbing, privies could be found everywhere — and they were often repositories for garbage. “I guess it’s because the trash truck didn’t drive through in 1900,” Given says. He estimates that maybe 10 percent of household trash went into the privy.

Given is quick to reassure anyone who finds the location of his digs off-putting. The privies he excavates haven’t been used in well over a century, long enough for nature to have taken its course. “It’s just dirt,” he explains.

Still, bottle hunting is very much a hit-or-miss proposition. “There’s less treasure in the ground every day,” he says. “People have been digging for bottles for 60 years. They’re very hard to find at this point. I can still find stuff. But all the easy pickings are gone.”

Creech is awed by Given’s digging prowess. “He’s worked as hard as anyone in the country for his bottles. He deserves a lot of credit.”

Given’s collection of more than 35,000 bottles includes soft drink heavyweights — like a Pepsi bottle from North Wilkesboro. photograph by Charles Harris

While there is certainly an economic interest in their collecting, it’s as clear as a vintage glass Pepsi bottle that both men are also motivated by the beauty and historical significance of their finds. “Here’s a product that has lasted 100 years,” Creech marvels. “It’s like you’re an amateur archaeologist, really. You’re preserving the past.”

And no bottle collector is doing a better job of that than Given, who’s made a living digging up bottles for more than three decades. While all that glitters is not gold, he can attest that, when it comes to glass, a good bit of it truly is.