With more than 15,000 dolls, this woman has the world's biggest Barbie collection

Bettina Dorfmann.
(Image credit: YouTube.com/GuinnessWorldRecords)

Barbie turned the big 5-6 on Monday, and in honor of this milestone Guinness World Records shared the story of Bettina Dorfmann, who owns more than 15,000 different Barbie dolls.

Dorfmann was given a Midge doll — that’s Barbie's best friend — in 1966, but began to seriously collect in 1993, Guinness said. She owns modern and vintage Barbies, including the incredibly rare original 1959 Barbie, and also runs a doll hospital out of Germany, which fixes hair and replaces limbs. Mattel says that there are more than 100,000 collectors across the world, but Dorfmann took the top spot in 2011, when she was officially recognized by Guinness as having the most Barbie dolls on the planet. Get a glimpse at just a small fraction of Dorfmann's dolls in the video below. —Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.