The Most Unusual Collections that People Have Dedicated their Lives To

21. Bras

According to the NY Post, “Chen Qingzu, 56, stands in a small room with the walls and ceiling covered in bras he collected, in Sanya, Hainan province, China. Chen has collected about 5,000 bras over 20 years after touring more than 30 different colleges around the country for public benefit activities aiming to raise awareness of breast cancer, local media reported.” It’s nice to know that this collection started due to a good cause and not just an odd infatuation with ladies’ undergarments. 

20. McDonald’s Memorabilia

Michael Fountaine owns the largest collection of McDonald’s memorabilia in the world. He collects absolutely everything to do with the restaurant, from advertisements, cups, cardboard boxes, toys, uniforms, signs, you name it. There are 398 different categories in his table of contents. It’s massive. A total of 9 rooms in Mike’s home are dedicated to his collection. Mike started working at McDonald’s when he was 15 years old. By the time he was 30, he was able to work his way up and own his own McDonald’s restaurant. In his own words, “Ketchup runs through my veins.” His goal is to work together with the McDonald’s corporation to open a museum where the proceeds will go to the Ronald McDonald House charity. If you would like to see a video of Mike and his collection, click here.

19. Sugar Packets

Kristen Dennis from Chicago holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of sugar packets. She has 9,596 unique packets in her possession. This collection took 13 years and several thousand dollars of investment to attain. We know one thing, it would be an absolute mess if her sugar packets were leaking. If you would like to see a video about Kristen Dennis, click here. 

18. Rubber Ducks

Charlotte Lee from Seattle, Washington loves rubber ducks. She loves them so much that she is the Guinness World Record holder for the largest collection of rubber ducks in the world. The total of the collection was 5,631 as of 2011. Her collection started as a lark. She just collected a few with her friends, and it eventually spiraled to thousands of rubber ducks. If you would like to see a video of the collection, click here to see a Guinness World Record Facebook Live recording. In the video, she said the new number of ducks is closer to 7,000 unique toys.

17. Bowling Balls

This collection may not have won any awards, but it received a lot of attention when he was posted on Reddit. The bowling ball pyramid in the photo contains 1,785 balls. It took over 15 years of collecting to get to that point. The inspiration came from when they saw a photograph back in 2001 of a bowling ball pyramid, and decided that they wanted one of their own. None of the balls are glued together. They’re simply stacked and balanced perfectly on top of one another.

16. Golf Balls

For over 50 years of his life, Dick Falenski collected golf balls. He has over 50,000 balls, and they are all on display in his home. There are so many that he has had custom furniture made to store all of the balls. Others are stacked in containers, and many are inside of a gigantic gumball machine. There is no Guinness World Record title in Dick’s name, but if he were to apply to be recognized, he would surely win the prize.

15. Erasers

Remember going to the school store as a kid and picking up a novelty eraser? Those were the days. This collection appears on a website called Joe Wood Worker, where he shows his eraser collection that currently totals 2,900. Joe spent 34 years collecting these erasers, starting from a school trip he took to the Baltimore Aquarium when he was a boy. This collection could potentially break a Guinness World Record, but Joe would have to apply for it first.

14. Scratchcards

A man named Dave Mannix owns the largest collection of scratch-off-tickets. He has over 100,000 scratch offs that have never been used. He spent roughly £80,000 on the collection, and his goal was to sell them for £500,000 or $617,095. Some of the cards are rare and collectable, featuring limited edition artwork that is no longer available to purchase. Even though he might have a hidden jackpot somewhere in one of those cards, Dave refuses to scratch a single one.

13. Toy Cows

Everyone better “moove” over, because the next collection will knock your socks off. It’s a collection of 1,679 cow stuffed toys owned by a French model named Emeline Duhautoy. There is no mention if she has ever tried to get her collection submitted to the Guinness World Record, so it may not be the biggest in the entire world if you were to come down to it. But it’s still massive, and worth taking a look at.

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12. Nails

Richard Jones spent over 50 years gathering over 3,000 nails from all over the world. Each of the nails is unique, and he has them on display on cases in frames. Jones told the Daily Mail, “I want to educate people about nails – if you think nails are boring come and see my collection it will change your mind.” There was no mention of Jones attaining a Guinness World Record, or if he ever attempted to apply for one. It seems as though he’s just happy owning his nails.

11. Dresses

One couple- Margot and Paul Brockman have accumulated one of the world’s largest dress collections. Over the course of their lifetime, they have accumulated 55,000 dresses. They own so many, that they needed to rent out a massive warehouse to fit them all. But in 2013, they decided it was time for some of them to be sold. They made around $100,000 at the beginning of their journey, and expect that the total value of all the dresses to be over $1 million.

10. Smurfs

Gerda Scheuers is the Guinness World Record holder for the largest collection of Smurf memorabilia. It totals more than 11,400 individual pieces. She isn’t sure how much the collection is worth in total. But each individual item is worth between 50 cents and $10,000. So she estimates that she may be able to get $100,000 if she sold some of her bigger items. If you would like to see a video of Gerda’s collection, click here.

9. Beer Cans

Jeff Lebo started his beer can collection when he was a kid. Back then, a lot of kids did it as sort of a naughty hobby. But even as an adult, Jeff never stopped. He even owns the very first beer can ever created from American Can Co. Now, he has amassed over 100,000 cans, and the collection is worth between two to three million dollars. If you would like to see a video of Jeff’s beer can collection, click here.

8. Funko Pops

Paul Scardino started his Funko Pop collection in 2017 when he received two for his birthday. And by the time he won the Guinness World Record in 2021, he attained 5,360 figurines. All of the figures are displayed outside of their boxes on shelves in his basement. Each shelf has a different category of Funko Pops, and he keeps them all very organized. Whenever he wants to collect a new line of Funko Pops, he has to downsize the collection somewhere by selling figures on eBay to make room for new ones. If you would like to see a video about Paul’s Funko Pop collection, click here.

7. Gaming Consoles

Linda Guillory owns over 2,400 unique gaming systems. And they’re not just the traditional gaming systems that you would think of like Nintendo Switch and N64. Her collection includes all types of LCD screen games, including gaming watches and miniature arcade game systems. Many of the games Linda buys are from eBay, and she challenged herself to see if she could fix broken vintage games. She even took several trips to Japan to buy vintage games. If you would like to see a video of Linda’s collection, click here.

6. Video Games

A man named Tony Romero Monterio from Richmond, Virginia has won the Guinness World Record for the largest video game collection in the world. With over 20,139 video games, it took auditors over 8 days to count the massive collection. He prides himself in completing every single game that came out for every console in North America. If you would like to see a video about Tony Romero Monteiro’s collection, click here.

5. Studio Ghibli Memorabilia 

Eloïse Von Velvet from France is the owner of the largest Studio Ghibli collection in the world. She owns 1,304 items and earned the Guinness World Record. Some of her most prized possessions are her Ponyo music boxes, as well as a large Jiji statue from Kiki’s Delivery Service. She was quoted saying “It’s my life”, because she spends 3 to 4 hours per night on the Internet and often gets up in the middle of the night to bid on something from eBay. If you’d like to see a video about Eloise and her collection, click here.

4. Model Cars

Billy Karam from Zouk Mosbeh, Lebanon owns the world’s largest collection of toy cars, totaling 37,777. He was actually a former race car driver himself, and began collecting these toys as a hobby. Soon enough, his wife got sick of it, and told him he needed to take it out of the house. His collection is housed in the lower half of a giant warehouse garage, where his brother keeps a collection of real race cars. He actually owns 6 Guinness World Records for his models and dioramas. If you’d like to see a video of Billy Karam’s collection, click here.

3. Star Wars

The largest collection of Star Wars Memorabilia belongs to a man named Steve Sansweet. He houses his collection of 500,000 items in northern California at a place called Rancho Obi-Wan, which he opens to the public as a museum. In 2015, people from the Guinness World Records came to check his collection, and they were only able to audit 93,260 items before they gave up and said it was good enough to win the award. It’s too many to even count! If you would like to see a video about Steve Sansweet and his Star Wars collection, click here.

2. Sneakers

The term “sneakerhead” is given to someone who loves sneakers so much, they hold onto a giant collection, even if they don’t wear every single pair. But the biggest sneakerhead of them all is a man named Jordy Geller from San Diego, United States, who owns the Guinness World Record for biggest shoe collection. He owns 2,388 pairs of sneakers, and keeps them in his warehouse which he calls a “ShoeZeum”. Since all of these rare sneakers are in their original boxes, the entire collection was estimated to be worth over $1 million. If you would like to see a YouTube video about Jordy, click here.

1. Harry Potter Wizarding World Memorabilia

A lot of people own Harry Potter and the Wizarding World collections in their homes, but no one is as big of a fan as Victoria Maclean in South Wales. She spent 18 years of her life collecting 3,686 items of Wizarding World memorabilia. One of her most treasured items is a Platform 9 ¾ snow globe from the San Francisco Music Box Company. And one of the most difficult items she attained was a golden snitch puzzle from Japan. Victoria said that she was incredibly proud to attain the Guinness World Record, and that it was the biggest achievement of her life. If you would like to see a YouTube video about Victoria, click here. Eventually, Victoria was de-throned from her spot at #1 by a woman who has over 5,000 Harry Potter items. You can find that updated video here.