A father and son duo from Chicago claims to have enough memorabilia to break the Guinness World Record for the largest Doctor Who collection.
Chicago resident Lee Thompson and son William, a University of North Texas business student, say they have over 7,000 pieces of memorabilia. If verified, that would beat out the previous record of 6,641 items achieved by Lily Connors of Pontypridd, UK, as verified by Guinness World Records on June 20, 2016.
William Thompson said the collection with his father includes books, statues, toys, games, trading cards and more.
Technically, their inventory totals 21,000 items, he said. However, a large majority of these items are not eligible for the Guinness World Record, such as dupes, fan-made magazines and unauthorized publications.
After removing the ineligible collection, they were left with 8,084 items that could be counted towards the record.
With witnesses, they could only verify 7,467 items due to time constraints.
“Pretty much anything that had a Doctor Who-related item is pretty much in our collection,” William Thompson said.
Doctor Who is a long-running British science fiction series following the Doctor, who travels through space and time to stop history from being altered. The series originally ran from 1963 to 1989, relaunched in 2005, and is currently running.
William Thompson started the collection back in 2020 after his father’s friend gave him Doctor Who target books, which is a series of episode novelizations. Both were surprised by the amount of merchandise out there for the series they loved and decided to collect more.
“We kind of went a little nuts,” William Thompson said. “And just kind of [said], ‘Hey, we’re bored. Let’s just start seeing what we can collect,’ and we haven’t stopped.”
William Thompson said his dad has always been a fan of the series. While his dad was a little hesitant to show them the series, William said his father introduced him and his sister to the 2005 revival. He was instantly hooked.
“The first episode [of the revival], just both my sister and I, we watched it, and we’re like, ‘Holy cow, this is amazing,’’’ William Thompson said. “Then my dad got excited, and then he started looking everywhere, and he got some old VHS of the original Doctor Who, and then he showed us all that. Then it just kept going.”
William Thompson said the Doctor Who community had congratulated them for claiming the record.
The Thompsons are waiting for a final decision from Guinness World Records.