From Johanna Hessling in Philadelphia
Pizza, Pizza, Pizza! On Sunday, 31 July 2011, I travelled to Philadelphia, PA, specifically the neighborhood of Fishtown, to witness the attempt of the largest collection of pizza related items.
Brian Dwyer, the pizza collection owner, has been a pizza fanatic all of his life and decided to start a serious collection in 2010 when he purchased his first and favorite item, an LP record by the musical group, Fat Boys, that contained an image of the group with a pizza on the cover.
For this record, the guidelines were straightforward. All of the items had to contain a pizza image, had to say the word 'pizza' or had to be a pizza motif and any duplicate items, such as earrings or any items (i.e. plates) that contained the same image on them were counted as one item.
In order for Brian to achieve the record, his collection needed to contain a minimum of 500 items.
I began the official counting by genres, (i.e. household items, clothing, games/puzzles, etc.) and determined one full count. I then did a second count of all of the items as one large collection.
Everyone who was patiently waiting for the final count dined on pizza slices and ice cream from Fat Baby, who produced special flavors, such as anchovy pizza and Guinness beer, for the event.
After reviewing the numbers from my two counts against the collection list provided to me by Brian, and discounting items that did not comply with the guidelines, I determined that Brian's collection contained 561 total items and that he had just achieved a new Guinness World Records record!
Congratulations to Brian and a shout out to the rest of his "forefather" team, Michael, Joe and Ryan for hosting an amazing event.
Welcome to the Guinness World Records family!
