THE COLLECTION

ART

Art Gose is a bottle hunter. He was born in Sumter and has been digging for antique glass bottles since he was 16 years old. And not just for any type of bottles. He is searching in the timeline of the pre-to early 1900s. He goes inside ruined buildings, digs up previous locations of privies and gets covered in dirt, all for the chance to find a bottle worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. When he goes into a dig, he is after South Carolina Dispensary bottles.

The bottles are identifiable by their oval egglike shape with a palmetto tree printed on the face. “People all over the state, collector-wise, are looking for those. I like them just for the fact because when I dug with my dad, the first time I ever dug, I found 12 of them. And he got so jacked up about finding those two with the trees on them that it just sparked my interest for them,” Gose said. After Gose’s dad passed away in 2009, his love and interest in bottles and bottle hunting only grew. And now, Gose’s collection is in excess of 1,000 bottles.

It doesn’t end there, though, for Gose. He is the founder of South Carolina Bottle Hunters, a group created to maintain the history of bottle hunting. He wants to reach a wider audience and pass it along to a next generation. Even with Gose’s massive collection, he is still after certain bottles he has yet to dig with his bare hands, one of them being the elusive Imperial Bottling Works from Sumter. After 15 years of digging, he has found pieces but never a full, intact bottle. Still, Gose has come across some rare finds over the years. A couple of his bottles, such as the Charleston Exposition bottle from 1901-02 and a Tombstone Dispensary bottle from 1893-1895, have gone for thousands of dollars. He has also sold a bottle that alone paid for his wedding and honeymoon. That is just scratching the surface of what is out in the antique bottle world.

Unlike many, Gose gets his satisfaction for what he does by literally pulling it out of the ground. There are not many people who can say they spend their weekends kneeling in a hole in the ground.

Patrick Lewis is a bicycle mechanic. But to be fair, he is more than that. He sees value in a variety of ways when it comes to bikes, his judgement separating him from the lot. To him, a sentimental value is worth as much as the bike itself. “Bicycles were a part of my freedom when I was a child. Like I was 5 years old and my dad would say, ‘You can ride your bike to town.’ I was a kid, and I had a lot of freedom at the time, and I still have that love for bicycles,” Lewis said.

The collecting started for Lewis when he was 20 years old. He saw an old bicycle in his father’s barn and heard stories about how he acquired it. At the time, his brother took it apart, but Lewis wanted to be the guy to put it back together. After assembling it back to its original form, he started riding it. Realizing it was still his father’s bike, the necessity to have some of his own snowballed into obtaining one, then two, 10, 20, then 100-plus.

As a premise to collecting, Lewis’ thoughts are that the more original it is, the better it is.

He takes pride in fixing up a bike, as original as possible, and then riding it how it is. In Lewis’ back shed sits a Schwinn Panther III from 1961-62 with a tree branch that has grown in between its frame. He found it in the backyard of someone’s house at their yard sale and paid $15 for it. The branch does not impede the functionality of the bike, and Lewis intends to keep it the way it is. In his eyes, condition is secondary character. If it tells a good story, why take it away? His wide collection also contains a P.T. Stallard road bike, a trader bike and a shopper bike, all from England. He obtained those while overseas during his time in the Air Force.

As long as there is a history to it, Lewis wants it. Bikes are meant to be a tool and are utilitarian by nature. Each bicycle that Lewis owns is road-worthy, while a bike that sits on display is merely a hunk of metal.

Want to see this story in motion?

Scan this QR Code or head to www.theitem. com/studiosumter to check out our Lakeside Features video series.

Scott Estep is a sports memorabilia treasurer. If it’s related in some way back to Sumter, it’s most likely hanging in his restaurant downtown, J. O’Gradys. He calls it the "Sumter County Sports Hall of Fame.” And if it is not hanging up, he either has it at home or he is pursuing it.

Estep remembers collecting cards with his father. It was his introduction into the world of sports and memorabilia. As Estep’s collection grew, it got to a point where he wanted to narrow down the spectrum of what he had. An easy way to do that was to affiliate sports with Sumter.

Estep started collecting in 1988. “I would buy 10 Dwight Gooden rookies in Columbia, bring them to Sumter and sell them at Carl’s Card Shop and double my money. It worked well. I would buy things to sell,” Estep said. Over the years, people have approached him asking for appraisals or have given offers on their collections. And although he has formed many relationships with people through collecting, in Estep’s mind, it matters more that he can attribute a souvenir back to the town of Sumter.

In J. O’Grady’s, it is obvious that inspiration came from Bobby Richardson. Richardson played second base for the New York Yankees, and his 1960 World Series MVP win is the only such title to go to a player on the losing team. Estep has Richardson’s high school jersey from 1953, signed baseballs, seats and a third base from Yankee Stadium, tickets and more.

Richardson is just the tip of the spear when it comes to famous athletes from Sumter. He has Freddie Solomon’s cleats, Billy McMillon’s baseball bat, jerseys from Jordan Montgomery and Ja Morant, the line-up card for JP Sears that hung in the dugout and even a NASCAR tire from Cale Yarborough’s car.

Estep wanted to create a place for people to come and see the rich history of sports in Sumter. The walls are so filled now that he needed to start hanging stuff on the ceiling. Estep wants to share his collection with everyone he can. His worry is that if people don’t see it or talk about it, then it will be forgotten.

Mathew Morse is a collector of hobbies. He is not constricted to a single topic but a bundle of different items. His interests come and go, and his range in collections reflects his constant curiousity. Currently, Morse is pouring his enthusiasm into four different collections: pens, cameras, hats and artwork. Each has its parameters. The high-end fountain and ballpoint pens are hand-crafted from titanium. The digital cameras are all from the early 2000s. His hats are not of professional teams but of minor league baseball teams with whacky logos. And the artwork has a modern style that is full of color, blobs and shapes. Anything that contrasts itself from the environment around it is what draws Morse’s attention.

His collection of collections is spread throughout his home office. They are neatly organized among each other on the walls and tables as extensions of himself.

Morse’s collecting had humble beginnings, stemming from his days in school. He would get excited about shopping for pens and stationery, and when he moved on to art school, the functionality of the item turned into the aesthetic.

“There is a little bit of this fomo, too, fear of missing out,” Morse said. “A lot of what I collect is limited edition or limited run. So, they will say, ‘We are going to make this from say June 1 to June 30, and after that window closes this will never be made again.’” Morse is constantly researching, gathering and trading. He is always looking to pick up something new at the drop of a hat, the click of a pen.

His infatuation with collecting is what switches his attention from one topic to the next. He is always pushing his creativity and strives to pursue unexplored mediums. Morse is unbound by the single-source collection. Why be a master of one when you can be a master of many?