Wacky Couple Share Their Home with 240 Love Dolls

60-year-old Bob Gibbins, and his wife Lizzie, 55, have a rather unusual collection of 240 different kinds of love dolls that they like dressing up and taking on shopping trips.

Bob relaxes with some of his favourite dolls

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Posted by andrew, 5 April 2011. Post has 0 comments.
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World’s Largest Collection of Santa Claus Memorabilia

Canadian Jean Guy Laquerre, a 74-year-old former geography teacher, is the proud owner of the World’s Largest Collection of Santa Claus Memorabilia.

Laquerre became addicted to Santa Claus memorabilia after his aunt gifted him with a beautiful 20th century papier-mache Santa Claus figure, over two decades ago. "It awakened the child in me" he says, but his fascination for Santa soon turned into an uncontrollable obsession. This "Santaphilia", as he calls it, started back in 1988, and in the next 22 years he managed to put together an impressive collection numbering 25,139 items.

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Posted by andrew, 23 Dezember 2010. Post has 0 comments.
Canada collection collector Santa Claus

Banker Spends 35 Years Collecting Beer Cans

Nick West, 51-year-old banker from Clevendon, Britain has spent the lats 35 years putting together an impressive collection of 6,788 beer cans.

The banker from North Somerset started his British beer can collection when he was only 16 years old. His wife-to-be, Dorothy, bought him a book about collecting beer cans, not knowing she would spend the next 35 years regretting her bad taste in presents. Nick became quite fond of collecting all kinds of beer cans, and before long, the couple had to move to a larger house, one that would be roomy enough for his ever-growing collection.

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Posted by andrew, 25 November 2010. Post has 1 comments.
beer can collection collector United Kingdom

Man Spends More than Half His Life Collecting Belly Button Lint

Collecting navel lint is probably not the kind of hobby you want to bring up in a conversation, but that hasn’t stopped a 45-year-old librarian from collecting his own belly button fluff, for the last 26 years.

Graham Barker, from Perth, Australia started his bizarre collection when he noticed his own navel lint, one night, and became curious about how much fluff a person produces. The only way to answer his own question was to monitor his own belly button, and collect the lint. Contrary to what most people believe when they hear about his weird habit, Graham isn’t obsessed with lint, nor does he spend most of his time checking his navel. He is only driven by curiosity, and dedicates a mere ten seconds a day to collecting the fluff, right before stepping into the shower.

The amount of fluff he finds in his navel every night depends on the type of clothes he’s been wearing that day, but he has noticed thermal underwear is the most productive. Each night, he takes whatever he can find in his belly button and stores it in a clay jar, bought specifically for collecting lint. At the end of each year, he ads the lint to his grand collection. In the 26 years that he has been collecting his own fluff, he managed to fill three glass jars, and he is already working on his fourth. Believe it or not, his extensive collection weighs just 22 grams.

Graham Barker admits that lint, as a raw material, is worthless, but it gains both curiosity and financial value. After being acknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest collection of navel lint, his three jars of fluff were acquired by a museum, for an undisclosed sum. When they see the belly button lint collection, most visitors have a positive reaction, but there are still those who find it disgusting or simply stupid.

Graham only plans to stop collecting navel lint when he is incapable of doing so anymore, but he reckons he’ll fill up five more jars before then, thus making sure his record doesn’t get beat any time soon.

Posted by andrew, 16 November 2010. Post has 4 comments.
Australia belly collecting collection collector fluff lint

Small meeting in Dresden

During last Saturday serge and our old user Catalin has a very calm and cheerful meeting in Dresden, Germany. Catalin is sand collector and he is our most active forum member. He has suggested a lot of improvements and remarks how our custom collectible feature in the CollectionStudio software can be more powerful, customizable and to be most suitable for particular collectibles. We have implemented his ideas, with only one remark – each feature should be suitable for any kind of collectible. That's why right now you can track collection of any type within CollectionStudio.

During this meeting in Dresden we have discussed following existing features and upcoming in nearest feature extensions:

• CollectionStudio Online feature;
• Using notebook camera for barcode scanning;
• GPS coordinate and map pointing;
• Map zooming feature;
• Customizability vs. usability;
• Different collectible types;
• Exchange of discrete materials and “duplicate” field usage;
• New services for collectors.

Unfortunately, we had not so much time to discuss more and more but we hope it was not our last personal meeting.

Posted by serge, 28 Oktober 2010. Post has 1 comments.
collector features Germany Meetings

China Minerals Collector & Dealer: Chen Xiao Jun

Mr.Chen Xiao Jun is a professional Minerals Collector & Dealer in ShangHai, China. Since he was a child, he was very interested in natural science and collecting hobby, he was in University 2001, he has began to collect rocks and minerals for long times. He also got the Management Bachelor Degree in 2005, first he worked for a laser company, then he became full time minerals dealer 2006, and start selling minerals since 2005, mostly via internet, he also made a lot of minerals collectors friend all over the world, most of them visited him, also many collector friends just via Internet.

He has a minerals shop in ShangHai, and has three websites, 1. Crystal minerals of China: www.chinaruff.com 2. Fluorescent Minerals of China: www.susanstones.com 3. China Minerals of Chen Xiao Jun Collection Index: www.chenminerals.com And He always keep minerals hunting work all of China, sometimes he visited mine for collecting minerals, sometimes he visited miner or local mining area mineral dealers homes for buying minerals, he like his minerals career very much, and enjoy amazing minerals specimens, he is professional or a has lot experience in Chinese Minerals specimens. After you contacted him, you also will find he was also a very good and kind man, and you will enjoy stay with him. Also some famous International minerals website, you can find his article or some report about him, more details you can find from his websites.

Posted by chenminerals, 29 September 2010. Post has 1 comments.
China Collector Dealer Fluorescent minerals Minerals specimen rocks

Master Modeller Builds Unique Matchstick Armada

79-year-old Phillip Waren has spent the last 62 years of his life creating incredible ship models out of old matchsticks and the wooden boxes they used to be packed in. He started building his amazing matchstick models when he was just 17, using the things around him, and since matchsticks were much more common back then, finding large supplies was a very easy task.

The master modeler, from Brandford, Dorset, has created every ship built in the Royal Navy since 1945, as well as 60 other ships from the US navy and other impressive floating fortresses from 18 other nations. One of the largest ships in his collection is the famous USS Nimitz, the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

Throughout his career as a ship model builder, Phillip Waren created over 400 individual ships, as well as 1,200 airplane models that make his aircraft carriers look more real. The average ship in his collection is made using around 1,500 matchsticks and takes about a month to complete, but for his larger creations he used over 5,000 matchsticks and 200 wooden boxes. These took him about a year to complete. All in all, Phillip Waren used around 650,000 matchsticks, to create his entire fleet.

Although many museum curators told him his matchstick creations are worth serious money, Phillip Waren considers them invaluable, and has never once considered selling them. He decided not to ensure them either because he feels “the purpose of insurance is to replace things when you lose them. These can never be replaced”.

Sadly, his collection isn’t going to grow much bigger than it already is, not because Phillip Waren is getting to old, but because the wooden boxes used as packaging for the matches have been replace by cardboard ones, and his stockpile is running low.

Take a look at Mr. Waren’s detailed collection and prepared to have your mind blown:

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Posted by andrew, 31 August 2010. Post has 0 comments.
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Russian CPUs Collection

Largest private collection of CPUs has been discovered upon one Russian guy has posted a message on a forum. His message says "here is my humble collection for you" and then listed something more than one thousand of different types of computer processors he collected. There are ones from the old times and as well as modern ones, the lost and seemed never coming back relics of Soviet Russian genuine processors that preceded Intel world dominance and many other interesting findings he had.

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Posted by andrew, 30 Juli 2010. Post has 0 comments.
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Rock collector: Rob Lavinsky

Robert Matthew "Rob" Lavinsky, proprietor of The Arkenstone mineral dealership, was born December 13, 1972 in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Richard Lavinsky, an attorney, and Marilyn Rosen, a dental hygienist. He began collecting calcite at age 13, with the support of many mentors in the Columbus Rock and Mineral Society, including Carlton Davis , field collectors John Medici and Henry Fisher, and dealers Neal and Chris Pfaff, among others. He competed with his calcites (which he still owns) for the first time at age 18 in the Berea, Ohio show. He eventually expanded his scope to collecting United Kingdom classics, Sweet Home mine rhodochrosite, and worldwide classics. As a field-collector he dug for minerals in the dolostone quarries and roadcuts throughout Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky (Halls Gap millerite), Ontario (Bancroft), and various other localities.

Rob received his BA degree in Biochemistry and History from Rice University in Houston, Texas (1995), and went on to earn his PhD in Molecular Genetics at the University of California San Diego (2000). The first time he formally sold minerals as a dealer at a show was in 1986 (at the age of 14) at the Columbus Show. During the years from 1986 to 2001 he gradually bought and sold more specimens, becoming a part-time mineral dealer by degrees, and finally becoming a full-time dealer after graduation, in 2001. His first business name was simply "Rob Lavinsky Minerals," until 1994 when he changed it to "The Arkenstone" (the name of a fabulous gem in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy).

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Posted by andrew, 26 März 2010. Post has 0 comments.
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M.D. and collecting hobby

M.D. House Doctor Petrenko has rare hobby. Over the years, he collects the last words of his patients.

Posted by serge, 16 Dezember 2009. Post has 0 comments.
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