Guests dance the Met Gala Party for Jean Paul Gaultier x Shayne Oliver Group held at Sapphire in Manhattan on May 7, 2024. (Photo by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)

An owl curiously peeks out from a tree hollow. The pictures of the spotted owlet were taken by Anuj Jain in Chandigarh, India in the second decade of November 2025. (Photo by Anuj Jain/Solent News & Photo Agency)

A member of the public places her head in Drew McDonald's sculpture Sharnana, during the Sculpture by the Sea media launch event along the Bondi to Tamarama Coastal walk in Sydney, Australia, 18 October 2024. (Photo by Bianca de Marchi/EPA/EFE)

Runners cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge shortly after the start of the New York City Marathon in New York, November 2, 2014. (Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

Lorella Boccia attends Giffoni Film Festival blue carpet on July 23, 2014 in Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy. (Photo by Maria Laura Antonelli/AGF/SIPA Press)

Abandoned cars are seen around a cross in the village of Tbeti near Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Georgia, July 4, 2015. President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty with Georgia's rebel South Ossetia region on March 18 that almost completely integrates it with Russia, alarming Georgia and the West a year after Moscow took over Crimea. Russia won a five-day war with Georgia in 2008 over the fate of South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia. It formally recognizes both regions as independent states and signed a similar treaty with Abkhazia last year. (Photo by Kazbek Basaev/Reuters)

A member of India’s Dongria tribe faints in trance during the two-day long Niyamraja Festival atop the Niyamgiri hills near Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district, Orissa state, India, Sunday, February 22, 2015. Every year, members of this indigenous group celebrate this festival sacrificing animals and birds in worship of their deity. (Photo by Biswaranjan Rout/AP Photo)

There are many types of collections. Some are formed by purposefully collecting certain objects, such as stamps or coins. However, some collections are only a byproduct of an obsession, a quirk of mind. For example, Paul Brockmann got into the habit of buying his girlfriend and later his wife a dress every time they went ballroom dancing. It might seem excessive to some, but it was his way of showing his affection. Overtime, this collection grew to be enormous, counting 55,000 dresses in total. Basic math tells us that either they went ballroom dancing three times per day for every day of their lives, or he bought them in huge bundles every time.