Sven Stabroth, a German expat living in Kyiv, is always on the lookout for a bar of chocolate.
But unlike most of us, what interests him is not the chocolate, but the wrapper. In fact, he has amassed such a large collection of paper wrappers for chocolate bars that he has made it into the Guinness Book of Records.
Stabroth moved to Ukraine three years ago to work on an HIV prevention project, but continued his chocolate wrapper collecting hobby, which he has had from childhood. In 2015, his collection of more than 14,000 wrappers got into the national register of records in Ukraine. Stabroth says his collection is now even bigger – he has collected more than 17,000 chocolate wrappers from various countries around the globe.
Stabroth collects only paper wrappers of the bars that weigh 100 grams. (Anastasia Vlasova) (Volodymyr Petrov)
“I don’t want to have the biggest collection (of wrappers),” Stabroth told the Kyiv Post in December. “I want to document the factories and brands that made chocolate, trends in production and flavors that were popular.”
Stabroth has several criteria for his wrappers: they can only be made of paper (not cardboard or any other material) and the bar should weigh 100 grams.
“If you don’t have any limits (on your collection), what’s the point of your collection?” Stabroth said, adding: “That would be gathering rather than collecting.”
Stabroth said he started collecting chocolate wrappers when he was about 12-13 years old, and has continued his hobby for more than 27 years. He first entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1998.
His favorite wrappers are the rarest ones that weren’t sold on the mass markets. For example, he has rare chocolate wrappers of the iconic Odesa-based brand “Chaika” (Seagull). He even has wrappers from “McDonalds” chocolate, produced exclusively as presents for workers of the enterprise.
While the history of chocolate starts in 18th century, factories started to produce chocolate in the size Stabroth collects less than a century ago – the oldest wrappers in Stabroth’s collection date back to the 1930s.
He also has a large variety of chocolate brands named after popular women’s names, such as “Alyonka” in the Soviet Union, “Fedora” in Germany, “Darina” in Croatia, and “Daisy” in the United States. He also has old wrappers from “Svitoch” chocolate, which is still produced in Ukraine, but with rare flavors such as apple. He also has wrappers featuring celebrities, such as Michael Jackson.
Stabroth scans all of the wrappers and enters them in a database – after that he puts them in separate files collected together in large folders. He has a separate room in his cozy apartment in Podil district where he keeps his wrappers, but most of his collection is in Germany.
Stabroth held several themed exhibitions of his chocolate wrappers in Ukraine and abroad. (Anastasia Vlasova) (Volodymyr Petrov)
Apart from his collection, Stabroth has several large folders with wrappers he exchanges with other collectors. He says many fewer people collect chocolate wrappers than those who collect coins or paintings, but he knows around 20 of them.
Stabroth said that he visits a gathering in the Czech Republic at least once a year of collectors of various things made of paper, including chocolate wrappers, and that he always finds new wrappers there. He also uses Vkontakte, a Russian analog of Facebook commonly used in the countries of the former Soviet Union, to follow groups of chocolate collectors.
Some of the wrappers in his collection are presents from friends and relatives. Stabroth said that at first his parents didn’t take his hobby seriously, but now his mother helps him to scan wrappers and register them in his database.
Stabroth said that he also made several themed exhibitions of his chocolate wrappers such as “Muscularity on Chocolate wrappers” to show what messages advertisers use in the images they put on chocolate wrappers.
“For me collecting the wrappers is a way to get to know better the culture of the place where you live,” he said.
