May 12

Avid (rubber) duck hunters maintain world record

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Tonight at 7, on King-5’s Evening Magazine, you’ll see one of Fremont’s own denizens amidst a collection that surpasses all others in the world: 5,239 rubber ducks.

I knew I was in the right place when I saw the neon rubber duck in her window (and in my head, I heard Sesame Street’s Ernie singing about his rubber duckie).

A Guinness World Record holder since 2003, Charlotte Lee, 40 – an assistant professor in UW’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering – has dedicated the entire small basement of the Fremont condo she’s lived in since December 2008 to her “rubber duckies.” It took her husband – once a reluctant supporter, now an avid duck hunter – months to put up the shelves and cabinet that line the walls down there.

“I like the ducks, he likes the hunt,” Lee said. “It’s a good partnership.”

The collection in 1996 and began as gifts from friends to augment the rubber ducks they noticed she had in her bathroom. Soon, she had 13 or 14 – enough to spark an interest to build a collection. “It started out as a joke. You’re supposed to collect something respectable. But over time, the joke was on me. It’s become a serious collection, over all odds!”

Discovering eBay in 1997 pushed up her numbers and introduced her to the niche world, where she has shot to prominence. She and her husband, Marcel Blonk, founded Duckplanet.com, a website that has been instrumental in collecting rubber duck collectors all over the world. As a grad student at San Jose State pursuing a Master’s Degree in Sociology, acquiring the ducks provided her with some much-needed stress relief, which continued after she graduated from that and studied for a doctorate from UCLA in Information Studies. The ducks, she said, are “cheerful and fun, uplifting and not very serious.” Some of the ducks are as inexpensive as 50 cents, with the eBay average being $12. “For me, it’s not even a matter of how much, but what it’s worth to me. The good thing about being a collector for so long is being able to have a long view,” she said, which gave her the patience to pass up some deals for better ones in the future.

Soon, she had gone past the 1,000 mark in her collection, so her friends encouraged her to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. It required videotaping the collection, itemizing it (friends, again, helped her catalog her the duckies for 2 weeks), press clippings and two letters of standing from people in the community. In 2003, she took the record with 1,439. It’s been hers ever since.

“By then, it was almost a lifestyle,” she said. “You learn where to go. By then, I had international connections.”

In 2006, she had amassed 2,583 ducks, according to Guinness World Records 2009.

“I tell my friends, I’ve got the Library of Congress of rubber ducks,” she said.

In her travels all over the world, she picks up the ducks as souvenirs. Friends still give them to her as gifts. “Some of the best ducks, I get them through serendipity,” she said, showing me a vintage Italian duck in its original packaging worth more than $200. I pointed to a “Vibrating Duck.” In perfect deadpan, she said, “You wouldn’t believe the places I’ve gone to get ducks.”

Most, she said, aren’t even made of rubber, but rubber-like material such as vinyl or plastic. She even has “working” ducks – ones that can go in the bath, that aren’t part of the collection. Many are dog toys. She’s got a cabinet of the classic rubber ducks, but also thousands of every shape, style and size. Some glow in the dark, some smell like strawberries or lemons, some are big enough for children to ride on, some have eyes that bug out with a squeeze, some even play off popular culture: the i-Duck and i-Duck Nano; or Pond, James Pond.

It’s hard for her to come up with a favorite, but some stick out for her: the one made by toy designer Edward Mobley (from the 1950’s/60’s), the devil ducks from Fremont’s own Archie McPhee, the duck head on a duck foot (“Who would think this was a good idea?” she said).

One of her most controversial is in a package called “Tub-tastrophes”: six ducks drowned by a soda can six-pack ring, with a certificate of death attached.

“It was a huge controversy, and then you had people like me, who weren’t sure about this, but I need to have it for my collection!”

She’s starting to run out of space, so she’s researching museums that might be able to house part of her collection.


Tags

Archie McPhee, guinness world record, rubber ducks, uw, world records


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