This Guy Has Been Saving All His Nail Clippings Since 1978

58-year-old oil investor Richard Gibson has one of the weirdest collections in the world. For the past 36 years, he has been religiously saving all his toenail clippings in glass jars.

Collecting toenails is a strange hobby, but Richard says that he didn’t consciously decide to do it – it sort of happened as a result of his curiosity, and he just never stopped. He happened to be clipping his nails one day in February, 1978, and instead of throwing them out, he just put them in a manicure box. He then started doing it repeatedly, just to see how long it would take to fill up the box. That didn’t take too long – only two years – and by then he was pretty much hooked. So he moved his collection to a large glass jar, which is what now uses to put the clippings in.

“I have no idea how many nails are in the jar,” Gibson admitted. “It’s well into the thousands.”

Even so, his current jar is only 99 percent full, and Gibson says he has no idea what he’s going to do when it’s completely filled. “I’ll probably put them into something else,” he said. “I’ve got enough room for several more months worth of nails.”

I’d have to say, the nails in the jar are surprisingly long for just clippings. Gibson says that’s because he doesn’t cut his toenails regularly. “I only cut them when I break a fingernail or toenail,” he admitted.

It hasn’t been easy to keep up the collecting – Richard has had to hide the jar from his ex-wife and from visitors for several weeks at a time, but, against all odds, he managed to keep it safe and growing. His nail clippings jar has recently drawn the attention of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, who decided to featured it in their new book, ‘Reality Shock’.

Gibson says he hasn’t told his ex-wife the good news yet. “I’m waiting until I can show her the book. She’s always been annoyed by them,” he said. Personally, I don’t blame her.

But it’s not just nails Gibson is passionate about. He is into all sorts of odd facts. He has collected and submitted over 70,000 weird facts to the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not column. “I’ve had 750 of them printed, but this is the first time I’ve made it into one of the books,” he said. “It’s not like winning the Oscar, but I’m proud.”