Woman seeks Guinness record for collection of 1,456 beaver-related items

March 11 (UPI) -- A Virginia woman is seeking Guinness World Records recognition for her collection of 1,456 pieces of beaver memorabilia.

Lori Gongaware of Chesterfield said she started collecting beaver-related items in 1996 as a joke, but it soon turned into a hobby that filled an entire room of her house.

"I got everything. I got bottle openers, coffee cups, stampers, pencil sharpers and even a tattoo," Gongaware told WWBT-TV.

Gongaware said she is now seeking recognition from Guinness World Records, which lists the current record for beaver-related item collecting at 717. The record was set by Indiana couple William and Shirley Niese in 2015.

"For my particular record they wanted a specialist witness, so the specialist witness had to be someone who knew about beavers," Gongaware said.

Gongaware enlisted the help of a specialist from the Richmond Wildlife Center to verify that her collection of beaver items numbers 1,456. She said she is now waiting to hear back from the record-keeping organization.

"It makes me happy, the nice thing about collecting beavers it's not like collecting teddy bears, with teddy bears there's so many of them but beavers they're so hard to find," she said.