Stan is one of my personal heroes. He is a friend to all Utah collectors.
He had a friend that was a collector back in the 60's. He started frequenting the antique stores purchasing bottles for the friend and pretty soon found himself hooked on the bottle habit.
He was involved in a purchase of an old drug store in Logan, Utah. The location was filled with early 1900 items still in their original boxes. But it didn't stop there.
When I was just a young digger, the word in the dumps was that this guy, Stan Sanders, was buying up anything we dug from Salt Lake and any other town in Utah. It became a digging frenzy to find things to sell to Stan. We all thought he was crazy. Those old drugs and soda couldn't be worth anything but we could take them to stan for cash or trade on all kinds of other items.
He single handedly created the market for Utah items. And, as we all know now, the state items in every state are the most in demand. He opened he first bottle shop in Utah.
Stans collection is unbelievable.
He has kept all of his items over the years and they are now housed in a bottle museum in two buildings on his property. In addition to bottles, he has collected Utah Golf items, Utah Basketball items, and even items from the battleship Utah.
In addition, somehow he found time to research the bottles he collected and now has volumes of history, documents, and collectible items on the early Utah entrepreneurs. His library serves as the source for most of the historic articles we will be publishing.
Stan has been significant in recovering much of our Utah heritage. He remains a person of inspiration to collectors everywhere.
