Richard Gibson has been treasuring a jar containing every single toenail and fingernail he clipped off himself since February 1978. It is one of his favourite collections on the shelves of the Louisiana home of this oil investor.

Gibson, has made sure that he kept every nail that he had clipped in the manicure box instead of throwing it out.

"I started doing it again and again and then decided to see how long it would take to fill the box," he said proudly.

When the box got full in about two years he started transferring the content to a bigger glass jar that he currently uses. Though he has not counted the exact nails in the jar, he estimates that it could easily be in thousands. Gibson's strange fascination has not gone well with his family including his ex-wife who used to ask him to hide the jar whenever they had visitors. However, all his hard work and the embarrassment at times has been paid off in the form of a picture of Gibson proudly holding the jar that appears in the latest edition of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not!" debuting Sept. 9.

Surprisingly, he has no set schedule for filling up to the contents of the jar as he cuts his mails only when he breaks a fingernail or toenail and never cuts to keep it real short and to fill up the jar. Gibson is already planning to switch over to a bigger container once this gets full and is no mood to discontinue this bizarre hobby.

Nails are the only clippings Gibson collects. Though this 58-year-old man from Lafayette, Louisiana has always been a hardcore fan of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not!" and has submitted 70,000 weird facts for inclusion this is the first time he had made into one of those books.