American boasts the world's largest collection of bricks

An Oklahoma family surprised a man by honoring him with a Guinness World Record for his collection of 8882 different bricks.

Clem Reinkemeyer, 87, was out of town when his daughter, Celia, and son-in-law, Dan Bisett, gathered a group of friends to count and document every object in the brick barn in Tulsa.

When Reinkemeyer returned home, he was surprised with an official certificate for the world's largest collection of bricks.

"I came back to the city and it was a big surprise. I'm very happy to have this certificate," he told Guinness World Records.

Reinkemeyer's collection, which he has been amassing for 40 years, includes a Roman brick from 100 AD, but most of them date from several centuries earlier.

Great-grandfather Clem Reinkemeyer has a barn that houses a very unusual collection – the largest collection of bricks pic.twitter.com/jtI9Xo4MrD

- Guinness World Records (@GWR) February 17, 2025

"The heyday of brick production was somewhere between 1870 and 1910. A particular type of brick like this has a certain clay that resists heat, and they all needed a chimney," he stated.

The American said that some of his most valuable bricks are those with spelling errors, like a brick that spells "Tulsa" with an "s" turned backwards. "I think Oklahoma has the history of the most misspelled bricks. I don't know why."

One of the favorite bricks is for sidewalks produced in a factory in Washington, which was located where the Pentagon stands today.

"There may be some of these bricks under the Pentagon. But I think this is unique," he claimed.

Reinkemeyer explained that bricks appeal to him because of the history they hold, "what attracted me to bricks is the fact that they have names and you can trace them historically to the places they come from, and that has always intrigued me. It's something unusual, but I like it." /Telegraph/