This post is sponsored by Safestore

Do people still collect the maddest stuff the way they used to? Do we have time these days to restore and collect the obscurest of objects and keep them safe?

Actually I’m sure there’s people collecting the strangest of our obsolete items and preserving them for future generations as I write.

As humans, it seems, many of us just can’t stop ourselves collecting stuff. I remember collecting bottle tops when I was a kid and I now have no idea how that started or why.

Meet Gerry Wells – he was a collector who took things to the extreme. He loved all things electrical when he was a kid and dabbled in his shed with wireless radios. He started to collect all the radios that everyone else was chucking out into skips and dumps around his home town. He lovingly restored them and began a collection that would last a lifetime. His mother in fact warned him when he was still a boy:

“If you don’t buck your ideas up and conform, you will still be mucking about at the bottom of the garden in fifty years’ time.”

Her prediction came true but rather than being a pointless exercise he opened up his collection as a museum and people came for far and wide to meet Gerry and see his collection of radios from across the generations.

Sadly Gerry Wells himself passed away in 2014 but luckily his collection remains alive and well. Safestore Self Storage, who know a thing or two about caring for beloved items, want as many people as possible to know about this collection which you can still go and view. This is part of their #stuffisgreat campaign which highlights our love of collecting and the precious items that eccentrics and obsessives such as Gerry Wells preserve for future generations.

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