60-year-old Bob Gibbins, and his wife Lizzie, 55, have a rather unusual collection of 240 different kinds of love dolls that they like dressing up and taking on shopping trips.
Bob says he has always been interested in dolls, but his passion really started to develop when he used to buy rag dolls and other toys for his two kids. He then moved on to buying shop mannequins for a few years and amassing a pretty impressive collection, but it wasn’t until he found an online forum about silicone dolls that he realized that’s what he really wanted to collect. With the help of his wife, Gibbins acquired his first silicone doll, Beverly, in 2007, for around $4,000. But that was only the beginning, as the couple continued to buy different kinds of love dolls, from cheap blow-up dolls costing $639 at most, to realistic silicone dolls like Jessica, who put a serious $11,202 dent in the family budget. All in all, Bob and Lizzie Gibbins estimate they’ve spent around $160,000 since they started collecting love dolls.
You’re probably wondering what someone does with 240 dolls and mannequins, especially when they live in a not so spacious bungalow. Well, according to the wacky couple, they love dressing up the dolls, washing them and fixing them up so they look their best, and since they’re both very picky about their dolls’ appearance, this takes up a lot of their time. Silicone dolls are apparently very needy; they sweat and need to be washed regularly, which can be a problem considering they’re pretty heavy, but Bob and his wife spare no effort tending to their precious collection.
Photo by This Mornin on iTV
Bob has also opened a free forum for love doll enthusiasts like him, and he posts lots of his photos of his girls there. In fact, him and Lizzie often take the dolls on walks and trips around Herefordshire, in the nearby Black Mountains, and even on shopping trips. They take photos during these outings and then used them as the storyline for their forum posts.
Photo by Nick Obank / Barcroft Media
Although love dolls are usually bought and used for sexual purposes, Bob says he has never used one of his girls in such a way. He admits he finds most of them attractive, especially since he says they were created with perfect physical assets, but he considers them all part of the family. He likes to collect dolls and that’s as far as it goes. The most incredible part is Lizzie never had a problem with this bizarre arrangement. She says she doesn’t do this just to please her husband, but because it is a passion they both actually share and that’s allowed them to spend a lot of time together, which didn’t normally happen when Bob worked as a mechanic.
Bob Gibbins claims he has the world’s largest collection of love dolls, and most people in the business tend to agree with him. Unfortunately, the Guinness Book of Records doesn’t have a category for life-size anatomically correct dolls, so they can’t make it official, but Gibbins says the only other contender is a man from Japan, who has around 100 dolls.
