Crazy Collections
Many people form deep emotional connections to certain objects, whether they be gifts or just imbued with the memory of something that they loved. This, however, cannot be true for absolutely everything that everybody owns. Sometimes it is fun to collect as many or as wide varieties of something as possible. While children might collect action figures or trading cards, some of the things that people collect in high quantities are beyond imagining.
Whilst garden gnomes are commonly available from all sorts of places, they are in no way to everyone’s taste. They are however to Ann Atkin’s, the owner of the gnome reserve, taste. Her nature trail has over 2000 gnomes on the site, which guests can wander around and observe. Ann Atkin, before running The Gnome reserve was an art student, however now she tends to her ever-growing collection of gnomes and pixies. She has so many of the small figurines that she has been awarded a Guinness world record for the multitude of her collection. She takes in unwanted gnomes and gives them a place amongst the many that she already has. Just 7 miles from the Devon Cornwall border, on four acres of land, guests are even provided with a gnome hat and fishings rods free of charge in order to fit in with their new tiny friends. Whatever prompted Atkin to partake in this particular hobby, it has made her family of tiny inanimate people grow.
Magic can be found even in the smallest thing and every magician must have a few cards up their sleeves. Tony De Santis takes this to an entirely different level with his collection of around 8520 joker cards. His collection did not start with him, though it has grown exponentially under his watch. When it was given to him by Fernando Riccardi after the senior magician’s death, it was only 2000 large, though De Santis promised his mentor that he would continue to grow this slightly strange collection. The design of each joker in different brands of cards is different, with jokers each having their own unique marks. De Santis has travelled to markets all over the world trying to expand on his mentors work. Each joker gets individual attention from their owner, who does his best to memories the way each and everyone looks, with every one being different. There are no duplicates in his expansive collection of jokers. As of 2019, no one has been able to amass a collection quiet as large as De Santis’ and with the immense sum of it all, it may be extremely difficult for anyone to out-do.
Everyone has things that they care about, little trinkets that hold some kind of significance to them. Although others may not see the value in the things that you cherish, that does not mean that they lose their value. Worth is not purely monetary, but more of what they do and how it can make you feel. Something doesn’t have to provide us with a profit for it to be worth something.
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