I’ve collected quite a bit of real human hair over the years. One of the most interesting pieces is about six feet long. I bought it on eBay from a 19-year-old woman who was about to have a baby and decided she didn’t want to keep up with having extremely long hair anymore.

I’ve also bought a few 100% human-hair wigs from Amazon. At one point, there was a woman in a neighboring town who made wigs professionally and had a studio full of real human-hair wigs. When she retired, she was going to throw a bunch of them away, so I ended up getting quite a few for free.

I used to have a much bigger collection, but wigs can be surprisingly fragile. The more they’re handled, brushed, and moved around, the more they gradually wear out. For a long time I had such a surplus that I didn’t worry too much about that, but there are a few pieces now that I consider basically “gold.” Those are mostly kept on display rather than handled.

One of the most unusual pieces I have is a Korean woman’s ponytail that’s almost nine feet long. I actually keep that one in a display case. For privacy reasons, though, I don’t publicly show most of my real collection. When I share hair-related stuff online, I mainly stick to AI-generated images.

I’ve also met plenty of local women who are comfortable letting me touch or play with their hair because I’m friendly and respectful about it. There’s even one woman I know who turned 18 right after the smoking age changed from 18 to 21, and she used to let me play with her hair in exchange for buying her cigarettes. LOL. My interest in long hair has definitely led to some unusual stories over the years.