DEBRECEN, HUNGARY — Gergő Borbély has never thrown away an energy drink can, and now that habit has a title to show for it: the largest collection of energy drink cans in the world, a hoard of 2,000 different tins spanning more than 500 brands from over 40 countries.
Guinness World Records confirmed Borbély's total in April, nearly doubling the previous record of 1,100 cans set by a Canadian collector the year before. Word of the Hungarian haul has been spreading online this week as outlets picked up the certificate photos, giving the quiet hobby a much bigger audience than Borbély's dormitory shelf ever drew.
That shelf is where it started, back in 2008.
"It was a very hot August day, and I had only been living in my dormitory for a few days. I found a small shop nearby and went in looking for something cold and carbonated, but the only suitable option in the fridge was a Hell energy drink."
Gergő Borbély
Instead of recycling the empty can, he decided to keep it. "The cans simply started piling up in my dorm room," he has said. "After a while, I decided to take them to recycling, but while sorting them, I changed my mind and put one of each different can back on the shelf." Eighteen years on, that single can has multiplied into a collection documenting the odd, brief history of a drinks category that barely existed before the 1990s, including a run of Michael Jackson-branded "Mystery" cans and a find that doubles as a small piece of Cold War-era trivia.
"I also have an old Guarana energy drink made in Yugoslavia. I find that particularly interesting because the country no longer exists."
Gergő Borbély
Borbély has kept collecting through career changes and a honeymoon in Japan, where he picked up region-specific editions unavailable back home, according to Guinness World Records' listing for the category. The appeal, he has suggested, is less about the caffeine than the packaging — a cheap, disposable object that somehow ends up telling the story of wherever it was made.
Whether the record stands for long is an open question; coverage of the record this week noted the category has nearly doubled twice in two years. For now, 2,000 cans and counting sit on shelves in Debrecen, a small monument to never quite throwing things away.
