You want to know how my collection started? Here you go!

In 1998 I became, by coincidence, a guitar pick collector. 

On May 13^th 1998 I attended an Iron Maiden show at the Brabanthal in Leuven where the band was playing a gig of their Virtual XI Tour.

One of the opening acts that evening was the German band Helloween.

When their show was half way Roland Grapow, their guitar player at the time, flipped something into the audience.

It fell just before my feet and when I picked it up I saw that it was a guitar pick with the band’s logo and Roland’s signature.

A whole new world was opening up for me and the rest is, like people often say, history.

In the meantime 24 years have passed and at this moment my collection contains over 2600 different guitar picks from bands / artists and fellow collectors.

I also have some promotional picks, tin picks and other pick stuff but those are not included in the number of picks mentioned above.

Most of my guitar picks I got after talking to bands at gigs or by catching them when they got thrown into the audience.

Another part of my picks I collected by contacting bands who often responded by donating one or more guitar picks to me or via trades with other collectors.

I never could have thought that my life would change that night because of one single guitar pick and that it would be the beginning of what would become the Guitar Pick Gallery.

And today, after all these years, the story still continues…

Patrick Dierick - January 1st 2024