Collecting more than an obsession（痴迷）

Question1: When did Harley Spiller start collecting?

Question2: How many objects does Harley Spiller have?

Welcome to the Storycorps podcast（播客）. Harley Spiller started collecting when he was just 5 years old, and he's never stopped. For over 40 years, he's been stuck piling objects for his various collections, including the world's largest private collection of take-out（供应外卖食物的） menus, which earned him a spot in the Guiness book of world records. Harley spoke about collecting when he came to Storycorps in New York city.

I have probably close to a million objects in my 28 by ten-foot apartment: pencils, bottle caps, key rings, ten-thousand Chinese menus going back to the 1890s. I have only two chairs in the house, one in each room. A few benches were stored in them. The Chinese menus are under my queen-size bed, about sixty different white plastic spoons. I collect everyday ordinary things people don't think twice about.

String, it sounds ridiculous. A collection of string, you must be nuts. But without it, we'd all be naked, a couple hundred of funky neckties. I have the collections of things that sound like my name, Harley Spiller, I have an autograph to me from Phylis Diller signed "With Love".

And I collect flags from around the world, paper money...

I don’t collect stamps. There's too many. They're never ending. Every year, every country makes hundreds of different stamps, and there are just too many to be completed.