VALDOSTA — Collecting key chains started as something for Brent Dixon to do, but it has made him the official holder of a world’s record.

Guinness World Records notes: “The largest collection of key chains belongs to Brent Dixon of Valdosta, Georgia, USA, with 41,418 non-duplicated key chains, which he has been collecting since 2001.”

On a recent afternoon, Valdosta Mayor John Fretti presented the Guinness World Record award to Brent at the Dixons’ home.

“Brent, your record has put Valdosta on the map,” Fretti said.

The mayor added that Brent’s perseverance in achieving the world record should serve as an inspiration to everyone.

Brent, the 19-year-old son of Thomas and Karen Dixon, started collecting key chains at his mother’s urging. His first key chain was a blue-and-red, fit-and-shape key chain from a Tupperware party. His parents, older brother Justin Dixon, and family friend Patsy Casteen have been instrumental in helping Brent with his collection.

“It started out as something for me to do,” Brent said in a past interview. “I thought maybe I’d get a couple hundred of them. I had that many in the first few weeks and it just grew from there.”

Brent has muscular dystrophy, which was diagnosed when he was 13 months old. He uses a wheelchair because he’s never been able to walk. His mother believed that collecting something would get him involved and show him that there are possibilities in this world.

Little did she know that her suggestion of a key-chain collection would lead to what was to come, let alone a world’s record.

As word of Brent’s key-chain collection spread by word of mouth and even faster by Internet, hundreds of key chains began arriving at the Dixon household. They came from across the United States and from around the world. Casteen’s daughter sent a key chain from Paris. Missionaries in Nigeria sent a key chain.

The local Elks Lodge and chapters from across the United States sent Brent key chains. An Elks Club member from Wisconsin visited Valdosta when Brent reached 20,000 key chains.

He regularly received so many packages of key chains through United Parcel Service that, when one girl in the Midwest could not recall Brent’s name or street address, she simply wrote, “Key chains, Valdosta, Ga.,” on the package, the UPS knew to bring the package to the Dixons.

In a short period of time, Brent’s collection grew from several hundred key chains to several thousand key chains.

He beat the past world record for a key chain collection by nearly 20,000 key chains. But laying claim to the record was almost more difficult than acquiring the key chains. Guinness representatives never visited the Dixon household, but they did make numerous inquiries about his collection. A past story in The Valdosta Daily Times, which included photographs of his collection, was sent along with a letter verifying seeing the collection. A sworn public official had to verify the number of key chains. The past record holder was contacted to see if his collection had grown to a size that could beat Brent’s challenge; it had not.

The process took more than a year, but Dixon’s record should be included in the 2008 or 2009 volume of “The Guinness Book of World’s Records.”

Though key chains still occasionally arrive at his house, Brent says his active collecting days are behind him. For the past year, he has been concentrating on his studies while attending classes at a school in Warm Springs, the Georgia area made famous as a treatment center for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s polio.

He has spent the past year, his senior high-school year, at Warm Springs, training to become more independent. This spring, he will return to graduate with his class at Lowndes High School. Come late summer, he plans attending Valdosta Technical College to study drafting.

Brent is proud of earning the world’s record, but he is now excited about seeking new challenges in a world of possibilities.