by C.J. O’Neill, Monroe, North Carolina
January 2014 Central States Archaeological Journal
A few weeks ago, after a day of work, my wife and I sat down to watch a movie I had taped when the telephone rang. A voice I didn’t recognize asked me if I was the fellow who had the Terry Mashburn bottle. He was referring to a 3 1/2 inch green bottle bannerstone I had purchased in 1990 that had been found by a fellow of that name. The caller introduced himself and said that he and Terry had been relic-hunting buddies for many years, and he wondered if I still had Terry’s bottle and if I still collected bottle bannerstones.
I think my heart skipped when I figured out where this conversation might be going.
I said yes to both questions, and the fellow, Mike Morse, went on to tell me that he had with him a fellow who had found another bottle, this one a yellow quartz example, and he wondered if I might be interested in it as the young man wanted to sell it and Morse did not buy relics.
The finder, Jay Herrera, got on the line and told me he had found the yellow bottle while looking for arrowheads in a farm field near the St. Francis River in Marked Tree in Poinsett County, Arkansas, two Wednesdays previous.
I told him I was interested and asked him to put Morse back on the line. I asked if he could send pictures over the internet and he said his wife would send some. He called back shortly and I ran upstairs to see the images. There were two images of a yellow bottle with a red streak across the middle. The piece had a slight crack running from the lip down one side for about an inch. It was very highly developed, probably the most highly developed bottle I had ever seen. It appeared to be genuine. It was obviously one of the photos that the piece was made of translucent quartz. The piece had the little nuances that the fakers haven’t yet copied, thank God.
I immediately called back, but the young man had already headed home with his find. I then asked Morse, a man I had never met, a personal question. Did he have a checking account? He said he did and I told him that while I knew this whole thing was a little crazy, I wondered if he might get up with Herrera and write him a check for the thousands of dollars he wanted for the banner. I told him I would take the banner with no strings attached, that I was relying on his judgment. Besides, I had seen the pictures and while they were certainly not fool-proof, the piece looked genuine.
Without hesitation he said he would pay the young man for me. I arranged to have my own check sent to Morse by overnight express and he then called Herrera and said he had his money and to bring the bottle back.
We exchanged calls the next day, and I mentioned that while I did not know the finder of the bottle or the fellow who was buying it for me, that I felt good about the whole thing and he said he did too, although his wife had wondered about buying the piece for someone they had never met. He said there was a fellowship among relic people that he had learned to trust over the years. The people he knows who collect relics are people of integrity, he said. And I agreed.
So I now own a beautiful, five thousand-year-old yellow quartz bottle purchased from a man I did not know, the deal facilitated by a couple whom I had not met, in a deal that spanned thousands of dollars, a thousand or more miles and only a few days. Quite remarkable, this age of technology. I went back and watched the rest of my movie.