It has been 146 years since Alexander Graham Bell placed his first telephone call but it took less time for the cellphone to largely fall out of use. They are no match for ubiquitous smartphones but for Ekrem Karagüdekoğlu, they are symbols of a bygone era with “more spirit.” Karagüdekoğlu, who recently broke a Guinness World Record as the owner of the largest cellphone memorabilia with 2,779 cellphones of 150 different makes, hopes to create a museum for his collection.
Karagüdekoğlu did not work hard to select pieces for his memorabilia that he has proudly displayed at home as he is a cellphone repair technician. However, over time he expanded his collection by acquiring cellphones from other countries as well.
Cellphones, with their big and small buttons, outdated in this era of touch screen technology, adorn the shelves in two rooms of his house in Istanbul. Meticulously placed and tagged with notes about their models, cellphones from cumbersome Motorola resembling early 20th century walkie-talkies, to pocket-sized Nokia phones make up the collection.
Karagüdekoğlu said he has always been an electronics enthusiast and started collecting cellphones as a hobby before he seriously started devoting time to creating the collection in 2010. Apart from what today’s smartphone users see as “relics” of the 1990s, several communication devices resembling cellphones dating back to the early 1980s are also part of the collection. Early smartphones, which still had a few “buttons” later joined the collection.
Almost all phones in the memorabilia are in working condition. Karagüdekoğlu said he bought or received cellphones for free from his customers, seeking to replace them with modern counterparts. He boasts that some cellphones are “limited edition” and some are “only one of its kind available in the world.” He shows cellphones he acquired from the United States, England, Italy, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, India, Indonesia and many other countries for his collection.
Karagüdekoğlu decided to apply to the Guinness Book of Records, both to show off his collection and promote his country, in September 2021. On Jan. 11, his application was concluded and he was certified as the owner of the world’s largest collection of mobile phones. The certificates he received are proudly displayed among rows of cellphones.
“Every cellphone here has a story for their previous owners. Some are ‘celebrities,'” he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Thursday, referring to the use of his phones in some TV ads and shows.
He sees the collection as “a cultural heritage” and plans to create a museum for them in the future. He believes this will be a good promotion effort for Turkey as the collection is “unique.”
“So many things have changed since the telephone was conceived but I believe these old cellphones were better. They had a soul that (smartphones) lack. There was a time when people would clutch their cellphones and eagerly await new text messages from their loved ones. Nowadays, with smartphones, people tend to swipe left and right to ignore the new messages,” he lamented. “New phones also cause memory loss. You don’t have to think, smartphones do it for you instead. This makes us lazy,” he added.
