ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Dr. Val Kolpakov of Alpharetta might just hold the crown for one of the craziest world-record collections you’ll ever hear about.
The dentist, who runs Peach State Dentistry, has the undisputed largest collection of … toothpaste.
He said he got his start on it years ago, when he began trying for a very different record.
“When I started my dental career, I was pulling hundreds of teeth, then I remembered there was a Guinness record for number of teeth pulled,” he said. “I started looking online for that record and I could not find it.”
Dr. Kolpakov kept hundreds of extracted teeth (and still has them), but it never led to the record books.
He still came away with a record to chase, however.
“Instead, I came across information about collecting toothpaste, and I thought, ‘Hey I would love to collect toothpaste,’ because it’s much more exciting,” he said.
So he began collecting – different brands, flavors, novelty versions, even very old ones, still with original packaging.
“In 2012, I finally submitted all the papers to the Guinness committee and they approved my record,” he said. “But that was almost 10 years ago. I clearly acquired at least another thousand since then.”
They’re now all on display at his practice.
“We tried to convert our office to sort of a dental museum,” he said. “All my patients, they’re pretty excited when I show them some unusual flavors that I have. And if they travel to certain countries, they bring me toothpaste from there.”
In all, he has roughly 3,000 toothpaste tubes. Of all the ones he’s come by, he still remembers the one that got away.
“I have one in mind, that I actually missed on eBay,” he said. “It was toothpaste - a tube that was in space.”
He said acquiring all of it has probably cost close to $50,000 over the years.
“They say collecting is some type of mental illness, because we kind of turn crazy,” he said, laughing. “I don’t see any stopping point for sure. I might slow down, but I’m always looking for that something special.”
World's largest toothpaste collection
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