The history of hair collecting
Forget your initial reaction, because hair collecting is perfectly natural and normal and has a long history.
It’s got religious roots, but secular celebrities have also had their clippings treasured since at least the Victorian era.
It’s still going strong because it still has the same appeal - a literal piece of a person you admire.
Hair from some heads is now extremely valuable: Che GuevAra’s hair has sold for $119,500; Elvis for $115,120. In 2012, a lock of slain US President Abraham Lincoln’s hair sold for 55% over its pre-sale estimate at $38,837.
All of these prices would probably be much higher now.
Abraham Lincoln's hair was treasured as a relic of a man taken too soon.
A long history
Some of Ancient Greece’s shrines to military heroes contained physical relics. Stealing the body of an admired leader was one way a warring state might humiliate an enemy.
And physical relic keeping has long been a tradition in most of the great religions. In fact, Hinduism’s eschewing of the practice (probably because of the prevalence of cremation in India) is considered exceptional.
Cathedral shrines in the UK very often included physical remnants of saints. The body of Saint David, patron saint of Wales, was carried to the nation’s princes so they could swear oaths on it.
Although Christian teaching reports that Jesus ascended into heaven in physical form, churches have claimed to hold parts of his body (nails, hair, blood, teeth, yes, his foreskin) in the past.
Physical pieces of the Buddha (and other religious leaders) are stored in specially built stupas in temples.
From the sacred to the loving
The Victorians brought hair collecting into the secular world.
In the age before the photograph, a lock of long, feminine hair was a prized token of affection.
Victorian jewellery made from hair. Pieces like this might be love tokens or mementos of loved ones who had passed away.
These tended to be personal gifts rather than a way to worship a hero or heroine.
The Duke of Wellington told the world that George IV left at his death a great collection of women’s hair locks.
It was gifted in lockets or specially made jars. And a small industry in hair-made jewellery grew up.
The European aristocracy and ruling dynasties - whose power, they told the world, was derived from their DNA - loved to trade these trinkets. France’s Empress Eugenie was thrilled to receive a bracelet of Queen Victoria’s hair according to the British monarch.
A lock of Queen Victoria's hair. The 19th-century's ruling elite enjoyed trading body parts.
America's front line hair warriors
In America, the practice moved to a society in the throes of expansion via frontier wars.
Many a departing soldier left his loved ones a memento cut from his head. Some, including reportedly General Custer, shaved their heads so they wouldn't be scalped. A lock of the ill-fated cavalry man's hair was sold for $25,510 in 2013.
Violence is no barrier to some hair collectors.
The collecting of grisly mementos from executions is long recorded. Notable political killings - King Charles I, Louis XVI - have often been accompanied by rushes for souvenirs, particularly royal blood.
Less orderly deaths have inspired the same craze. One of the most valuable American presidential artefacts is a strand of hair that is said to still bear the evidence of the murder of its owner, Abraham Lincoln.
The new age of celebrity
As the 20th century dawned, new forms of mass media started to create a very modern phenomenon, the celebrity.
Actors, movie stars, musicians, socialites... all could become the object of obsessive worship.
One of silent movie star Mary Pickford's defining ringlets was auctioned for $15,000 to raise money for the war effort in WWI.
A press snap of Rudolph Valentino, an early focus of modern celebrity culture.
On a 1923 trip to London, Rudolph Valentine was, said a contemporary gossip mag, swamped with requests for locks of hair by "English flappers."
They concluded: "He would probably have been balder than Bob Fitzsimmons [the famously high-foreheaded boxer] had he complied with every request."
This wish to venerate the great star continued beyond his untimely death. Valentino's coffin had to be closed before his funeral because crazed mourners were pulling hair from his head.
Putting some structure on a craze
Inevitably, these disparate strands have cohered into a more ordered collecting scene.
A key figure in this is Leila Cohoon who got heavily into hair in 1949. A cosmetologist teacher, Ms Cohoon believed hair was a unique part of the human body.
She opened the world's only hair museum, Leila's Hair Museum, in 1989. Alongside the celebrity hair in her exhibit are interesting locks from mere ordinary mortals.
And finally into the science
Any TV detective show fan will tell you that hair holds DNA.
And it is thanks to a hair collector that we now know that Thomas Jefferson fathered a child with Sally Hemings, a woman he owned as a slave.
We also know that Jack Worthington's claim to be an unknown child of John F Kennedy is false.
That's thanks to John Reznikoff, who holds the world record for the largest collection of hair. His set of 115 celebrated locks was reportedly insured for $1 million in 2001.
Beethoven's fine head of hair nearly didn't survive his final illness but it has subsequently told his story through scientific tests.
Hair also records our lives. Beethoven's hair showed he suffered from lead poisoning before he died - apparently almost bald from souvenir hunters with snipping scissors.
The composer's hair - it's basically carbon - was recently sold in the form of manufactured diamonds. One got an offer of over $200,000 online.
DNA and cloning is the cutting edge of science these days. It can't be long till the cloning attempts start.
Until then, hair collecting is an interesting hobby that brings an extremely personal element to any celebrity collection.