Weird Collections Blog

            According to Weber (2018), Carol Vaughan from England collected 1331 bars of soap from all over the world between 1991 and 2009.  She likes to find some special and unique soaps in the world, she loves to find ones that might seem unusual.  She found one of her favorites near home, in a local shop.  Her favorite soap is shaped like Santa Claus’s head. It only goes to prove that you don’t have to go far from home to start collecting. She became a local celebrity and also,  she received the Guinness World Record for her collection.  Her collecting started as a way to pass the time while she was caring for her mother Ivy May, who died in 1991.  She also had a huge collection of carrier bags, more than 600 biscuit tins and 850 mugs piled up at her home. A really sad fact is that she died at the age of 67 and there was not enough money for a funeral.  So the idea that was carried out was to sell her wide range ...

Bob is a hero! He lives with Lizzie and 240 other women… it’s a joke…  Around 2006 Bob bought a doll, but it is not just a doll, he bought a life-size "love" doll. In 2011, he had 240 of them.  At the time, his collection was the largest of its kind in the world.  His collection is valued at 100,000 euros, 4,000 euros each.  This mechanical engineer was fascinated by these dolls.  He always thought "it would be nice if they could move or sit up, because I'm an engineer, so I started making my own", but that changed with the first one. We know what the common use of these dolls is, but Bob has never been interested in that use,  he prefers to name them, dress them, take pictures of them and take them shopping. He takes great care of his dolls, they are untouchable,  in fact if someone doesn't respect them, he "kicks them out". The thing is, what does Lizzie think? Well, she agrees.    In fact, she likes it and it's part of it. One of her reaso...

A retired worker has collected more than 8,200 'do not disturb' signs from hotels all over the world.  Eduardo Flores has collected signs from 190 different countries since 1995.  His passion began when a friend visited his office and noticed a couple of signs he had hanging up.  He thought they would be a good basis for a collection.  As a collector, he believes he finds value in each individual item.  He picked up his first sign in Pakistan nearly 20 years ago.  Also, he said that the most interesting signs are found in Africa, Asia and South America.  The UK doesn't have the most attractive signs, but he has two nice ones from Scotland which are shaped like teddy bears. Despite Mr Flores's achievement in amassing so many signs,  he is still in the shadow of Swiss collector Jean-François Vernetti, whose collection boasts 11,111 examples.  So Mr. Flores is planning trips in which he chooses which hotel to visit based on the likelihood that t...

John Reznikoff is a North American who started as a collector in 1989.  He is founder of University Archives, the premier hub for historically collectible items. At age 8, Reznikoff received some stamps from his grandmother, who years earlier had escaped from Nazi Germany.  When he was 13, his mother took him to various trade fairs and that's when he started doing business with his collectibles. He holds the Guinness World Record because he has collected celebrity hair for many years,  including Beethoven, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein.  John spent over 5 years traveling around the world collecting locks of hair from over 100 celebrity heads. The collection of hair is valued at $1 million, for example; locks of George Washington's hair are valued at $1600,    Abraham Lincoln’s hair at $3500, Michael Jackson’s hair at $2000 and Elvis Presley's at $15000.   An interesting fact is that he doesn’t like collecting hair from b...