(Fortune Magazine) -- I always wanted to be a historian. Little did I know that combining that interest with my passion for soda would make our family business a success.

As a child I was rewarded with Dad's Root Beer for helping out in the store. Since then, I've learned volumes about vintage sodas. And 11 years ago I started stocking our shop with varieties of little-known brands.

John Nese, 63, Galco's Soda Pop Stop owner, Los Angeles.

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Now we have over 500 kinds. I don't carry Pepsi or Coke made with corn syrup, so I buy from a bottler that ships the Mexican version made with real sugar. We always have Moxie, which in 1884 was among the first sodas to be bottled in glass.

Today's sodas are sold in plastic bottles and cans. Large manufacturers over carbonate soda because plastic leaks. With glass, the way it goes in is the way it comes out.

I've revived five sodas and gotten them back into production, including a version of Delaware Punch. A customer had requested the soda, but it's hard to find in the U.S. A bottler in Pennsylvania found the original recipe, and we now sell it under the name Pennsylvania Punch.

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