ROCHESTER — Would you like a shark jaw with your ice cream cone?

Jim Carberry, owner of the Robin’s Nest in Rochester has almost enough on his hands to make the offer. During the summer, the Robin’s Nest is filled with cold ice cream and fried food. But this winter, stop by and the shop might have been filled with more than a hundred shark jaws.

Carberry inherited a collection of 10,800 shark jaws large and small from his brother, Paul Carberry, who lived in Washington state and passed away a little under a year ago.

Paul was somewhat of an eccentric. He drove trucks for years, then when an injury forced him from the trucking business took up collecting bail bonds. When he died of a heart attack he had just finished training to become a private investigator.

No one realized the extent of his obsessive collection of shark jaws (with a few skins from sharks, alligators and snakes thrown in for diversity) until they made their way to the locker, where Paul kept the jaws in plastic bins stacked floor to ceiling.

“We knew he had them, but we didn’t know he had all this.” Jim explained, adding that “his daughter used to not want to bring guys over because the house would stink so badly of fish,” but after his wife died and his grown daughter moved out, “even his daughter didn’t know” the extent of the collection. 

Jim’s niece has a baby, and no interest in figuring out how to dispose of the collection. So the task fell to the Rochester resident.

“He was into fishing, but he didn’t catch all these,” said Jim indicating the jaws and, explaining that his brother imported them from all over the world.

When Jim first learned about the collection, his knowledge of sharks was average. However, he’s learned a lot in trying to identify the different types of jaws from sharks large and small.

It’s also been a grueling process, that’s required taking his camper out to Washington, spending days in the freezing locker. Reaching into bins to catalog shark jaws left Jim with countless cuts. “I eventually stopped bothering with band aids and just used tape,” he said. 

So, what does one do with 10,000 plus shark jaws?

“We’re hoping to find a collector that wants them and will buy the locker,” said Jim, adding that a collector in Australia has expressed interest.

The issue is the price. Some of the big, well-known jaws, like those from a Mako shark can easily sell for $300 or $400 dollars.

However, sorting through them and verifying which species the jaws belong to when there are thousands of them and some are mislabeled takes time and effort. Jim estimates that the process will take years.  Paying for the storage long-term and to ship the jaws off is also a significant expense.

Another option would be to sell the jaws off to a collector for something like $10 a jaw, which would bring in over $100,000, but also grossly underestimate the value of the jaws. Jim plans to give the money from the jaws to his niece, to help toward the cost of her first house. 

Jim admits  that the jaws, “intrigue me a lot. To look up the shark and see how they look is pretty cool. Some of them are really ugly looking!” he explained.

But it also gets overwhelming quickly. “I’ve had enough of looking at shark jaws for the day!” Jim exclaimed, as he left the shop.

Anyone interested in buying a shark jaw from Jim can call 774-283-0338 and leave a message.