DAPHNE — Joe Justice isn’t content just loving antique bottles.

He’s intent on sharing that passion with others.

And Justice succeeded over the weekend, after inviting a local man to join him at the Mobile Bottle Collector’s 34th annual Show and Sale.

“I told my childhood friend, Terry Vinson, who lives right here in Daphne now, that he ought to come to the show and take a look,” Justice said with a chuckle. “I’d say he was impressed because when he left, he was carrying his purchases.”

Justice, of Jasper, Ala., who manned a table along with his wife Jan, were among the approximately 65 vendors participating in the show.

Organizers estimated that about 400 people may have visited the show, coming from various parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

Rod Vining, of Irvington, Ala., event co-organizer, said vendors and visitors look forward to the glass wares — ranging from whiskey to hair tonic bottles, to milk and ink bottles.

It’s an opportunity for people to learn the history of their family heirlooms and experience other pieces, Vining said.

“Some people are disappointed when they find out their piece isn’t rare, that there are thousands of them out there,” he said.

“But then again, there are those premium — those truly rare specimens — that very seldom come along, but it can happen,” Vining said.

Vining said his specialty is medicine and bitters bottles produced in Mobile and embossed with the city’s name.

“Bitters has been described as a type of medicine. But it was more like alcohol laced with herbs,” he said.

Curtis Eberts said he’d happily traveled the 132 miles from his Panama City Beach, Fla., home to attend this regional event.

Eberts, who collects vintage ink bottles, said he enjoys sharing these shows with his wife, Maraline.

“Now this is my whole life,” Eberts said Saturday.

That kind of enthusiasm was obvious as early as Friday afternoon, when the venders were setting up and dealing among themselves.

Six-year-old Chloe Graham, of Hickory, Miss., is already an old pro at attending bottle shows with her father, Barry Graham.

“I like to talk to the people here and watch them put their bottles out,” she said. “I want to come back here every time.”

Collectors usually have a good idea what they are looking for, said Jamie Frye of Meridian, Miss., who along with her husband Rusty, helped set up a friend’s table.

She said they had been coming to this show for 21 years and had learned a lot in the process.

“Sometimes people are looking for something from a particular location, whether just in the south or perhaps as specific as Savannah or Mobile,” she said.

The Fryes’ specialty is collecting southern “pontil” sodas, which range from the 1840s to the Civil War era, Jamie Frye said.

“During the cotton boom, right before the Civil War, early soda water was for medicinal purposes. Then it kind of caught on as a soft drink,” Rusty Frye said.

Pontil refers to a manufacturer’s mark on the bottle’s bottom, he said, pointing to a bottle manufactured in Savannah in the 1850s.

“They stuck an iron rod in the bottom to finish the top and then they would break the rod loose, which left an imprint on the bottom,” he said.

Digging for old bottles is part of the fun in this hobby, Rusty Frye said.

“If you want to find the really old stuff, you go behind the antebellum homes — look for the trash pits behind the houses,” he said.

Forrest and Donna Cooper, of Florence, Miss., set up dozens of “applied color label” soda bottles at their table.

“That process, of painting on glass, was invented in 1934 and the very first soft drink to use it was Pepsi Cola,” Forrest Cooper said.

Collectors want bottles with well-preserved labels, he said.

Some even want the drink to still be in the bottle, Forrest Cooper said.

His favorite bottle is from an orange drink known as Moon Glow, a rare find (in mint condition) from a show 30 years ago, he said.

“He’s probably got the largest painted label soda collection in the state of Mississippi,” Donna Cooper said proudly.

Bruce Schad, of Greenwood, Miss., said he has hundreds of bitters bottles in his approximately 30-year old collection.

“It’s just fascinating, there are many different kinds of bottles and colors,” he said.

Another confirmed bitters bottle collector, Dennis Humphrey, of Northport, Ala., credits his mother, Imogene, with getting him involved in this hobby when he was 13 years old.

Decades later, some of his best memories center around this activity, Humphrey said.

“I like to think about the old houses we used to go dig around — those are good memories,” he said. “I still have some of the stuff we dug up together.”