"He would just pick them up everywhere because they were free and he'd just take a paper grocery bag until it got full of books," Holsinger told WHSV-TV. "He'd stack that paper bag on another once it got full and kept collecting more books."
Holsinger said she started cataloging the matchbooks and soon started to suspect the collection could be larger than the current Guinness World Record holder, a 20,736 matchbook collection.
"One of the boxes we counted this morning has 1,390 in it in - just one box and there are about 50 boxes in the closet," Holsinger said.
Holsinger, who is soliciting help from friends and neighbors to count the collection, said she believes making it into the Guinness Book of World Records would be a fitting tribute for her father.
"I didn't want to see it go and not have anything to show for all the time he spent collecting," Holsinger said. "If we could get it in the book, that would be history."
