From The Scoop: The Root Beer Collection of Bob Averill
From the February 2 issue of Gemstone Publishing's The Scoop:
Bob Averill started collecting root-beer-related advertising back in the 70's in search of the ultimate collection. So, for the last 35 years, you might say Bob's blood has run root-beer brown! Bob caught the collecting bug as a child with stamps and coins. As an adult he became fascinated and enamored with the number of various root beer companies that featured fabulous and whimsical graphics in their product advertising. The fact that root beer was the nation's oldest type of soft drink --- dating back to the 1850s --- coupled with Bob's natural interest and urge to gather those items and historical artifacts, led to a 35-year-long hunt that has culminated in his collection today.
As the years have passed, the faces of Bob Averill and Georgene Emery have become legendary at shows and auctions across the country. Also legendary has been the beautifully and lovingly arranged large multi-floor museum that Bob designed and built in and above his antiques and wholesale floral and gift supply business in Pottsville, Pa. For years the museum has been continually expanded and enjoyed by numerous groups, visitors, and passionate collectors alike. The museum has been the most comprehensive of its kind, housing the best-rounded groups of mugs, dispensers, signs, posters, barrels, boxes, crates, bottles and all manner of other categories of all brands of root beer on the planet earth!!
Many stories, of course, have come with the finds. Bob found the rare and possibly only known example of the Perfecto syrup dispenser in a northern Pennsylvania antiques shop he passed after business hours one evening. Seeing it through the window was all it took for Bob to pull off the road for the night so he could buy it the next day.
Bob enjoys telling the story of how he stopped at an A&W in Flagstaff, Arizona and bought the shop's double-bubble lighted clock off the store wall. Only about 250 of that type were made; one for each U.S. store location of the period.
Morphy Auctions saw what a true collector looked like and how he was driven to acquire when collecting the items for the upcoming sales. Bob got as much enjoyment finding and displaying a bottle and topper as he might have a much scarcer poster. A beautiful $50 trade card would thrill him as much as a nice syrup dispenser, at least to some comparative degree. Bob never lost the joy of the hunt.
His decision to disperse his collection with Morphy Auctions over a few sales in 2007 is your opportunity to select from his many years of extensive acquisitions. This will move Bob and Georgie closer to becoming full-time Florida residents and enjoying their long-established home and antiques business on Sanibel Island.
Visit www.morphyauctions.com for more information and to preview over 75 of the items from the Bob Averill Collection in the upcoming California auction.
To view all of the pictures from this article, read it at The Scoop’s website at scoop.diamondgalleries.com.
• Produced for the benefit of all who enjoy the hobby of collecting, Gemstone Publishing's The Scoop is available free of charge to anyone who wishes to receive it. To view the latest edition, or to sign up, visit The Scoop online by at http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com.
