As beloved CBS Philadelphia anchor Jim Donovan calls it a career, he’s ending it on a high note: enshrined in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Donovan, a longtime morning news presence at CBS Philadelphia, is appearing in his final broadcasts on Friday, Dec. 19. He announced his retirement in November after nearly 40 years in news, more than 20 of them here.

Before he walked out the studio doors for the final time, Jim ticked off one bucket list item: to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. And he said he wouldn’t have gotten there without engaged, devoted viewers of CBS News Philadelphia over the years.
A portion of Jim Donovan’s sock collection, labeled, numbered and organized, laid out in the Great Hall at CBS Philadelphia. There are hundreds more pairs outside the frame of this photo.CBS News Philadelphia
Jim said around eight years ago, viewers started noticing the colorful socks he would wear on air, and began sending him more pairs. Sometimes he’d receive several pairs of socks a week.

Early in the morning as he got ready to go on air, he’d often share a picture on Instagram showing the socks he was wearing, with the hashtag #JimSocks.

Looking through the hashtag now, you can see pop culture characters from Charlie Brown to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, sports teams like the Eagles, and Jim himself in a Santa hat.

Jim’s socks show plenty of Philly pride too — and pride beyond Philly. It’s no coincidence that a man named to the Ring of Honor for the 2026 St. Patrick’s Day parade has a pair of socks with the Irish flag’s colors and speckled with shamrocks.
CBS News Philadelphia
As viewers kept sending socks, Jim’s collection grew so much — into hundreds of pairs and then over 1,000 — that he thought “why not try to get into the Guinness Book of World Records?”

Over a recent weekend, Jim brought in all of the unique pairs of socks he owns and began to inventory them. He laid them out on the floor in the Great Hall at CBS Philadelphia, each pair bearing a sticky note with a number and a corresponding row in a spreadsheet that included a description of each sock and a photograph.

Jim estimated he put in an extra 40 hours during one of his final workweeks solely cataloguing, photographing and organizing the pairs of socks. In total, Jim amassed 262 pages of spreadsheets and a final count of 1,531 pairs of unique socks, with no duplicates.

“We’ve now heard back and it’s official, I now hold the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest sock collection,” Jim said on air Friday.

Jim’s official certificate is still on its way in the mail, but as of today, he is officially the new recordholder. The Guinness World Records website was updated on Friday, indicating Jim reached the record on Dec. 8, 2025. The previous recordholder’s collection was 1,165 pairs, according to Guinness World Records.

Juliana Guglielmi-DeRosa and Jeneene Bailey-Allen, members of the fashion and textile design program at Thomas Jefferson University, oversaw the official count and verified the collection.

Jim said the record does not solely belong to him, since viewers sent him so many of the socks over the years.

“This record is as much theirs as it is mine,” he said.

Juliana and Jeneene gave Jim a pair of TJU socks after they visited the station, which would bring Jim’s final count to 1,532 pairs.

That pair won’t be making it into an official spreadsheet anytime soon, however.

“I’m never going to do that paperwork again,” Jim said.