Legend Of Zelda Collection In Fairfax City World's Largest: Guinness

FAIRFAX CITY, VA — Tucked away in the basement of a Fairfax City home is the largest collection of memorabilia from The Legend of Zelda on the planet — 3,918 pieces of memorabilia to be precise.

In July, the Guinness Book of World Records made it official, declaring software engineer Constantine Adams as the new world record holder for the largest collection of Zelda memorabilia, more than doubling the previous record of 1,816 held by Anne Martha Harnes of Norway.

“I’ve been very quiet about my collection for a long time,” Adams said. “It was just a goal, right? There was something challenging to do, and I enjoyed it. It was hard at times. I'm not jumping up and down, because of it. But, now’s my time to show it off and say, ‘Here it is.’”

Amassing nearly 4,000 pieces of memorabilia is not something that happens overnight. For Adams, the journey began as a young boy watching his older brother play video games.

“I have a brother that's 4 ½- years older than me, and I would just watch him play video games,” he said. “I loved doing it. If I got out of bed and heard the video game music, I would run downstairs just to watch him play video games for hours.”

Adams admitted that at the time he didn’t feel confident enough and maybe he was even a little scared to play a video game himself. That all changed when he received a GameBoy with the Zelda game as a birthday gift.

“I remember playing in the car, and it was the first game I ever played through,” he said. I fell in love. And after that, I was just playing games and games and games and games.”

Over the years, Adams purchased thousands of video games, sometimes buying sacks of them at low prices, turning around and then selling them on eBay. He estimated that 90 percent of the money he made from selling games helped to pay for the Zelda collection.

“Zelda has so many games involved and I just really like the genre, the play style, I really like the collecting of assets in the game,” he said, when asked why he focused on just one game to collect.

A pivotal moment occurred in 2012 that reshaped Adams’ focus. He failed to purchase a large lot of Zelda amiibo figures – physical figurines that provide in-game content — on Craigslist. That loss inspired him to acquire a complete set.

“I developed a particular fondness for the Zelda-themed amiibo, which opened my eyes to the vast and vibrant community of Zelda collectors and the world of memorabilia beyond the games themselves,” he said.

Although characters like Mario and Bowser from other games were interspersed among the shelves and display cases that lined the walls of Adams’ basement, it was The Legend of Zelda that really appealed to him the most.

“I scan websites every single day for four or five years now, looking for this stuff,” he said. “I know when I see something that I'm not going to see again for another four or five years. That is a big factor on if I bite the bullet and when to stop trying to bargain and just pay the money.”

The public's awareness of Adams’ collection and the world record came about because his son really liked the big Guinness Book of World Records books.

“He would just sit there in his bean bag and scream from upstairs and tell me about the records he's reading about,” Adams said. “He was really just into it. We would get him these books for his birthdays and things like that.”

Eventually, Adams realized that he could be in one of those books.

After many months documenting each item in his collection and estimating their value, he submitted his application to Guinness in July, expecting to wait three months before he heard back. Instead, they notified him within a couple of weeks.

“I don't feel much different," Adams said, now that he's the world record holder. “I haven't really even made this public on my groups yet. Usually someone would say, ‘Hey, I got it.’ I kind of wanted this to just come out officially and then I'll say, ‘Hey, here's the link to it.’”