The most famous COLLECTION OF JUNK by the Guinness Book's Record holder for most PENCILS

1, Departamento de Colonia, Uruguay

What if you could make money with all the junk you’ve ever collect, that’s what this museum has done. How neat do you think you could actually keep that collection? I’ve seen the show Hoarders, it’s never a pretty scene.

Museo Granja Arenas Drunkphotography.com — LOL This is a headache medecine maker’s ‘mascot’ with nails in his head

While working in Uruguay, South America, I took some time to go to the province of Colonia. Along the way, I stopped at a museum that collects a lot of odd little things, it’s like hoarder on steroids. Imagine your child’s junk all neatly organized to line the walls of every room in your house, that is the look and feel of the Granja Arenas museum. I actually didn’t know what to expect, initially, I just saw a sign that it was a museum, and it’s an interesting collection of junk, to put it politely. The museum was started by a man name Emilio Arenas, who is a hoarder and has been since a young child. Everything given to him by family, friends, school, he kept, especially pencils and keychains. He had been collecting these things for 60 something years.

Through exchanges and donations, Emilio has managed to amass 4 rooms filled with:

36000 different keychains
19940 black graphite writing pencils, this collection is currently the largest in the World declared by Guinness World Records
4800 ashtrays,
3600 bottles of perfume
10,000 matchboxes
Small collections of cans of soda and beer, pins, phone cards, miniature bottles and quantity of antiques such as plates, mortars, cash registers, phonographs, andenolas….
These collections have been honored 5 times by the Guinness Book of Records.

That’s a pretty impressive collection! Emilio is so well known for this pencil collection that he was even invited to go to other countries, where he was gifted by owners of the company, with special pencils to add to his collection. Yes, this is what I do with my time, I go see weird things. 🙂 OH, and when you finish your tour, you can go and have some… jam.. or preservatives.