Eric McGuire
FOHBC Banquet and Cocktail Hour • Friday evening, July 29th [5:30 pm to 8:30 pm] Grand Sierra Resort, Crystal Ballroom
Come relax with the FOHBC and your bottle friends and enjoy a cocktail from 5:30 to 6:30 pm before the FOHBC Banquet on Friday, July 29, at the GSR Crystal Ballroom Prefunction Area. A cash bar will be available for your favorite beverage.
At the FOHBC banquet dinner in Reno 2022 National Antique Bottle Convention, Eric McGuire will be our featured speaker. Eric has been a long-time fixture in the world of bottle collecting, having been bitten in 1960. His interest began when digging was the only way to acquire the bottles he preferred—those with a Western origin. He would have it no other way since it was also the hunt that was part of the attraction of acquiring new finds.
Eric’s curiosity soon found him consulting various libraries and other archival sources to learn something of the history of his finds. He soon began sharing this information with other collectors.
He is a lifelong resident of California and was raised in Marin County, which makes up the North and coastal side of the San Francisco Bay. Because of his proximity to the city of San Francisco, he spent much of his free time digging in the sandy soil of that amazing city—a true Phoenix that arose from the promise of riches in the gold rush of 1849. This instant city brought with it the vitreous treasures that Eric so energetically sought in his younger years. Now, at 79 years of age, the shovel is used sparingly. Still, there are far more opportunities to find bottles uncovered by others, and there are even greater opportunities of researching the history of those old containers. As a result, Eric continues to author articles about various and sundry bottles that have essentially been cut off from their place in history as forgotten artifacts from our past.
After testing a few academic pursuits, including geology and business administration, he finally chose the field of geography, receiving a BA and MA degrees at San Francisco State University. This led Eric to environmental planning, where he worked for most of his career, primarily in domestic water supply. He is now retired, and besides the world of bottle collecting, he loves to indulge in family genealogy, photography, travel with his wife, Lisa, and visit with his family, which numbers eight children and a growing number of grandchildren. And, he says, don’t forget backcountry hiking.
Eric will give a slide show account of some of his experiences interspersed with interesting pictures that capture moments in time and are related to bottles, with whom only a small group of people may find interesting—bottle collectors.
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