The photo was unforgettable: Mark Schulze seated cross-legged on our living room floor, surrounded by hundreds of “classic” cannabis buds mostly from the 1970s and 80s, sealed in plastic baggies. When San Diego Magazine devoted the final page of its April 2024 issue to the image for its Sacred Spaces feature, it offered readers a rare glimpse into The Nectarball Collection—a decades-long archive of cannabis history perfectly preserved.
SD magazine 2024 Nectarball collection Mark Schulze.
A plume of cannabis smoke drifted upward, partially obscuring his face, giving the image a ghostly reverence. To most readers, it looked like a shrine. To us, it was a moment of coming out of the “green closet.”
The photo shoot itself felt like a celebration. Cannabis journalist Jackie Bryant, known in cannabis circles as The Plant Lady, arrived with her photographer, both visibly excited. Mark began laying out his collection piece by piece. Some buds were bright and fluffy, others brittle and shrunk by time. The baggies themselves were unmarked.
Instead, Mark had tucked a small piece of paper inside each one, often with nothing more than a name of the “strain”, aka cultivar, a date, a location, a cost, and the contributor’s nickname. Jackie leaned in close, eyes wide. She whispered to me, “People just don’t do this. This is history.”
That story began in 1972, when Mark was 14. A close relative, a cannabis enthusiast with a sharp wit and creative spirit, had become acquainted with the plant in the late 60s. One day, she opened a large dress shirt box she had decorated with orange cellophane. Beneath it was a map of Mexico with the city of Acapulco circled. From inside the box, she pulled a small seedy spear of Acapulco Gold and handed it to Mark. He didn’t smoke it. …
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Author: Patty Mooney / High Times
