Oklahoma man stumbles upon original recipe for Dr. Pepper

NBC -- Like Colonel Sanders' recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken, the recipe for Dr Pepper is a closely guarded secret.

Until now. A Tulsa man may have stumbled upon the early ingredients of the popular soft drink.

On a recent trip to Shamrock, Texas, Bill Waters found an old ledger in a dark corner of an antique store.

"Here are all these old formulas in it," he thought while flipping through the manuscript. "In my mind, I'm thinking doctors, pharmacists they like this kind of thing. I'm thinking there's some money to be made there. So I asked her how much? She said $200. So I brought it."

He believed that investment could possibly turn into $3,000, until he started researching the book's history.

"Started looking at the Old Corner Drugstore and found that's where Dr Pepper had been invented."

On a more careful reading, Waters discovered what appeared to be an early recipe for the famous drink.

"I thought, my goodness. I've got a national treasure!"

"It's a one in a million shot. It's the lottery of the antique business," said Tulsa antiques appraiser Dan O'Meilia. He's been in the business for 20 years.

"It's very rare for that to happen, especially when it's a high dollar figure like that," O'Meilia said.

Heritage Auction Gallery in Dallas is starting the bid at $25,000. Waters thinks it'll sell for a lot more.

The drink itself might have the answer to his luck.

"That's what we drank exclusively. We called it a DR, and we drank em 3-4-5 times a day."

Talk about luck, Waters also bought a needlepoint sampler in Sand Springs for $150. Sotheby's later sold it for $46,000.

Dr Pepper denies the formula has anything to do with the soft drink, but a historian at the auction house believes it is an early recipe.