10 photos

Smoke Sessions

Since 2003, Chinese collector Wang Guohua has been amassing cigarette boxes, some of which he now keeps in a room in Hangzhou, in China’s Zhejiang province. The collection includes 30,000 cigarette boxes from more than 100 production areas spanning more than 10 countries.

Pocket Monsters

Featured in the Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer’s Edition, Lisa Courtney’s Pokemon memorabilia collection includes 12,113 items.

Candy Land

The basement of Ron Hood’s home in Lewiston, Maine, has been fitted to display his collection of Pez dispensers and merchandise. He currently has more than 3,000 Pez items but noted in a 2008 interview that “my collection is considered very small in Pez-collector circles.”

Cheers!

Heinrich Kath, a farmer, shows off some of his approximately 20,000 beer mugs in Cuxhaven, in northern Germany. Although he does not drink beer, he has been collecting steins since 1997.

Bath-Time Fun

Valli Hammer’s collection of rubber ducks — no two of them alike — was not the world’s largest when this photo was taken. The 2,469 ducks she possessed were several hundred fewer than those held by a woman in California who claims the world record.

Hooters

Guinness has acknowledged Pam Barker of Leeds, Maine, as the owner of the world’s largest collection of owls. She possesses more than 18,000 owl items.

Slide Master

Mary Ann Sell of Cincinnati, Ohio, holds 40,000 View-Master reels in her private collection, considered one of the world’s largest, in Green Bay, Wisc.

Fun Key

A USO key chain purchased in Vietnam (where he served as a helicopter gunner) 41 years ago got Ron Tyler started on a lifetime of collecting.

Happy Holidays

Sharon Badgley’s collection of 6,000 Santa Claus dolls is so large that it takes her almost three weeks to display them all.