Judith Schulz’s most impressive trick with tops involves flinging them across the display area at the Spinning Top Museum in Burlington, Wisconsin, and hitting small landing platforms more than 15 feet away. “This is a rare skill to master,” she says, “even though it’s within anyone’s ability to pick up if they just try it enough.”
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Schulz’s obsession with tops began in 1975, when she was visiting the Soviet Union and bought a wooden doll that had a top inside rather than the usual family of smaller dolls. She began collecting in earnest and now has 5,000 models. “Tops are like cars–they all operate in essentially the same manner but have countless small variations,” she says. “I have promotional tops for kids’ shows like Huckleberry Hound, gambling-game tops that players would spin to match a race number with a horse number for placing bets, and even bracket tops where you pull one cord and get two tops released.”
Schultz’s favorite top is from Malaysia. “Top spinning is a national sport in Malaysia,” she says. “They even have a coin with an image of a top spinning on one side. The tops there are so elaborate you wind them with an 11-foot rope around a tree to get proper tension, scoop them onto a paddle, and they continue spinning up to seven hours.”
