Nokia superfan has world's largest collection of mobile phones with thousands of models
No, this isn’t the inside of a mobile phone store, it’s the home of Spanish Nokia superfan Wences Palau Fernandez.
He officially has the largest collection of mobile phones with a whopping 3,615 unique models in his possession.
The collection, housed at his home in Barcelona, beat the previous record of 3,456 set by Andrei Bilbie Argentis (Romania) in 2023.
His journey began when he was gifted a grey Nokia 3210 for Christmas 1999.
He started collecting Nokias in 2008, aiming to buy up all the models he wasn’t able to afford in the past.
His collection got bigger and bigger, eventually outgrowing the display cabinet he had for it and taking over an entire room.
By 2018, he had gathered over 700 different Nokia models and branched out into collecting other brands too, as well as phones that weren’t commercially available.
He said: “The evolution of my collection was constant, and although I had abandoned it for about a year, then I returned to the fray with the intention of getting, in addition to all the phones that Nokia launched on the market, those that it did not put on sale, the phones which we all know as prototypes.”
Wences has documented his journey towards his record-breaking collection on his own website, Nokia Project Dream.
His collection now includes phones from Siemens, NEC, Motorola, Blackberry, Samsung, HTC, Apple and many other brands.
Some of his phones are specially manufactured limited editions, such as his Nokia 3220 Star Wars Ep III collection.
He owns the Yoda, Starfighter, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Cyborg and Padawan versions of the phone.
Wences adds on his website: “In my collection I have very exclusive and difficult to find models.
“My current collection is the result of a lot of perseverance and financial effort, if you are a collector you will know well what I mean.
“A collection that is still incomplete but that I continue to expand whenever possible.”
Revealing why he decided to share his collection, he added: “I have finally decided to show my collection to the world even if it is not finished yet.
“Gathering each and every one of the terminals that Nokia manufactured is not an easy task but, taking into account that Nokia released just over 1,000 phones, having more than 700 different models in collection along with the objects and accessories that I currently have, I believe that it can begin to be considered a museum and the reason why I have not waited a few more years until it was completed to present it.”
You can see Wences’s full collection (so far) here.