A thirst for collecting Soda-pop predilection runs deep for Glimcher By: David Sanderson Posted: 5:26 PM CDT Friday, Sep. 15, 2023

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This article was published 15/09/2023 (753 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He’d like to buy the world a Coke… OK, maybe not those Cokes.

Among the hundreds of items up for grabs at Coca-Cola’s online store is an eight-fluid-ounce bottle of the world’s most popular soft drink that can be customized to have one’s name stamped on its instantly recognizable red-and-white label, below the caption “Share a Coke with.”

Coke collector extraordinaire Morris Glimcher — Mo to his buddies — keeps two of those very receptacles in his Linden Woods home, one marked “Share a Coke with Morris” and another that reads “Share a Coke with Mo.”

Just don’t expect the former executive director of the Manitoba High School Athletics Association to follow the instructions by sharing either specimen — or offering you a sip from the dozens of other unopened bottles of Coke populating a wing in his rec room — despite how thirsty you claim to be.

To be perfectly clear, Glimcher enjoys a nice, frosty Coke as much as the next parched person, and goes so far as to ask for water, if he’s in a restaurant setting where the only option is Pepsi. When it comes to his carbonated cache, however, it’s strictly a case of lips off.

He allows that people might find it odd to collect a commodity that is meant to be consumed, but to him, it’s no different than amassing stamps or coins, which have a separate, primary purpose as well.

“Or they’ll make the comment, does a person really need to have yay-many bottles of Coke, just because they come from Spain or Italy?” he says. “To me, the answer is simple: Yes I do.”

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Glimcher comes by his love of Coke honestly.

His parents Don and Ida, both of whom were Holocaust survivors from Poland who moved to Winnipeg in 1948 with mere pennies in their pocket, ran a North End corner store called Economy Foods for years.

Local Coke distributors supplied much of the signage for the shop. By age 10, Glimcher, the younger of two brothers, had developed a taste for the beverage, which he would sort and stock at his parents’ establishment every afternoon following school, to earn his allowance.

“I remember Dad, who passed away 11 years ago, having all these great (Coke) ads and posters lining the walls, and when I think about the stuff he tossed out that’s now worth thousands of dollars, it almost keeps me up nights,” he says with a shrug.

Like other kids his age, Glimcher kept hockey and baseball cards, though he never considered himself a collector-type. That began to change around 20 years ago when, through his job, he was invited to attend an NCAA Final Four basketball event at which he was gifted souvenir Coke bottles boasting the logos of the competing teams.

Being a sports nut, he immediately thought, hmm, that’s cool, before tucking each away in a suitcase later that evening, for safe-keeping.

“That was the start. From then on, I would keep my eyes open if I was at a football, hockey or baseball game, to see if there was any interesting Coke stuff available,” says Glimcher, who was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame as a builder in 2013, three years before his retirement.

He continued to scoop up commemorative bottles or collectible cans here and there through the years, which he’d store in boxes, after bringing them home. It wasn’t until he purchased a number of wooden shelving units to properly display his lot that the collecting-bug bit, in earnest.

Now that he had ample space, why not do some digging, to see what else was out there, he told himself?

Let’s just say he wasn’t disappointed.

Because his job allowed him to travel extensively, he began making a point of popping into grocery marts, whether he was in Sweden, Israel, the Czech Republic — you name it — to buy bottles of Coke carrying the resident language on the outside label. Sure, he was excited to visit the Kremlin when he travelled to Russia on behalf of the International Bandy Association, yet he was equally over the moon to net a bottle of “Koka-Koлa” from a convenience store, during his time in Moscow.

“The same as McDonald’s, Coke is universally understood, so it didn’t seem to matter where I was in the world. Any time I was in a secondhand store or flea market and said, “Coke?” they’d lead me to a table, with stuff for sale,” he explains.

In an effort to broaden his horizons, Coke-wise, Glimcher eventually joined the Coca-Cola Collectors Club, a U.S.-based organization that will toast its 50th anniversary in 2024. The closest chapter is situated in Minneapolis. He has made the seven-hour drive there twice in the last 10 years, to attend an annual get-together where members buy, sell and trade highly sought-after souvenirs, usually over an ice-filled tumbler of you-know-what.

“You go there thinking you have a half-decent collection, then run into people who’ve been collecting all their lives, pretty much, who have a hundred times more than you could ever hope to get,” he says, his eyes widening. “I winter in Arizona and a few years ago I went to an estate sale, where the wife was selling off her late husband’s collection. No word of a lie: The entire house was filled with Coke memorabilia, right down to the tables and chairs. I bought some bottles from her but seriously, I could have easily spent a small fortune.”

Ron Mathison is the president of the Coca-Cola Collectors Club. He joined the group in 2003, a few years after he started buying Coke memorabilia for his sister as a favour — she wasn’t as familiar with eBay as he was, he says when reached at his home in Minnesota — only to become “addicted” to what was arriving in the mail, intended for her.

“Before I knew it I had over 100 bottles and thought, sorry sis, but I’m keeping most of these,” he says, noting he currently has in the neighbourhood of 1,500 Coke bottles, of all descriptions.

Club vice-president Dan Deane says that like a lot of people who are new to the hobby, he began by buying anything and everything he could get his hands on.

“I finally settled on a few things,” Deane says, from his home in San Bernadino, Calif. “I now collect clocks, signs — both metal and cardboard — and vintage calendars. My oldest calender is a 1918, which is the birth year of my father-in-law.”

When it comes to worth, Mathison and Deane agree that what’s valuable to one enthusiast may not appeal to another, whatsoever. A set of decades-old, cardboard stand-up ads fetched US$7,000 a few years ago at auction. While that amount is impressive, Mathison says it pales when compared to the US$150,000 a person forked over a few years ago for a pristine set of hobble-skirt-shaped Coke bottles produced in 1915 by the Indiana-based Root Glass Company.

“I also know of trays that have sold for $40,000, but those are truly rare pieces, and you don’t see them become available for sale often, if ever,” Mathison says, noting the club presently has 2,000 members from every corner of the globe.

Not necessarily, Deane responds, when he is asked the million-dollar question: Is everybody who devotes a sizable portion of their living space to the “Real Thing” a Coke connoisseur, through and through?

“The majority of collectors I know are also drinkers of Coca-Cola, but there is a small percentage that collect just because of the great artwork, and don’t drink the beverage at all.”

Back in Linden Woods, Glimcher admits he occasionally forgets the lower level of his tidily-kept abode is home to an eye-catching assortment of, besides bottles, officially licensed Coke coolers, playing cards, Christmas ornaments, napkin holders and lunch boxes. (That Coke flower pot resting on a window sill? It was a retirement gift, from one of his co-workers, he notes.)

Last month he had a new mattress delivered. Glimcher asked the person who brought it inside if he would mind transporting the old mattress downstairs, which he happily agreed to do.

“Seconds later, he was back upstairs, telling me he couldn’t believe what he was looking at in the basement, and was wondering if he could snap a few pictures,” Glimcher says.

“The same thing has happened when somebody’s been over to check the furnace or take a water reading. They’ll be all ‘wow, so cool,’ and I’ll be standing there all proud, pleased that others are getting as big a kick out of this stuff as I do.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca