Watkinsville man builds up antiques collection as company tears down
WATKINSVILLE - The collecting bug bit Jeff Bell when he started going through old buildings across the South, picking up antique wood for his refurbishing mill.
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The aged boards weren't the only antiques he found. Over the past 10 years, his business has given him a new hobby - collecting - not to mention hundreds of knickknacks, some dating back to the late 1800s.
To show them off, the 46-year-old Watkinsville native decided to build a natural habitat around them: a vintage general store. The store has attracted a diverse clientele, even though nothing is for sale.
Classes from nearby Colham Ferry Elementary, Oconee Chamber of Commerce members and plenty of friends have gone through the store, looking over products only their grandparents would remember. Bell has welcomed the visitors and hopes to have more schoolchildren tour the store.
"I needed a place to put everything and show it to the kids," he said Monday. "I tried to make it like 1900 with everything I've got in here."
Bell began collecting a decade ago, when he started finding bottles and other whatnots while searching for lumber for his company, Legacy Wood Products. The company reclaims heart pine and cypress from old buildings about to be torn down, and Bell started saving the items he found lying around the dilapidated buildings.
His collection started with glass bottles.
Bottles of Chero-Cola - a Columbus-based soft drink that eventually became Royal Crown - comprise the left side of the store. The glass soda bottles were some of the first antiques Bell collected.
One bottle in particular - Special Cola, which Bell believes was bottled in Watkinsville - highlights his collection. He has one of only three intact Special Cola bottles known to exist.
"It's just 6.5 ounces, shaped like a bowling pin," he said as he held it up. "It may have been the first Bludwine (an Athens-based soft drink that later changed its name to Budwine)."
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