Kicker: Drawing up a world record

NICK EICHER, HOST: Aaron Bartholmey is quite the collector.

AARON BARTHOLMEY: I grew up going to flea markets with my grandpa.

Over 30 years he bought all the graphite pencils he could find, as he tells his local TV station, WHO Channel 13 News.

BARTHOLMEY: I love the history behind them. The old businesses, the small town advertising, just some of the history that you can find on these things is really interesting to me.

Going by the size of the collection, he’s clearly very interested. So much so, he figured it was some kind of record. Which in 2020 was just over 24-thousand pencils, according to Guinness. So he pulled together some friends and together they counted 69,255.

BARTHOLMEY: It's kind of funny, because it started out as it was just a small thing to collect.

Those are the warning signs.

And it’s not as though he’s just keeping these to jot down a note. None of the pencils is sharpened.

So the whole thing seems, you know, pointless.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Or sketchy.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.