Adam Weitsman is a 45-year-old mogul of a $1 billion scrap metal empire with a dozen locations in New York, stretching from the Port of Albany to Rochester and across the Southern Tier.

He flies in a private Gulfstream jet with his wife, Kim, a former fashion model in her early 30s. They drive a $250,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost between a condominium overlooking Central Park in New York City and their other homes. For a change of pace, they climb into a Lamborghini and cruise to a Finger Lakes summer retreat he renovated for $20 million and filled with museum-quality furnishings.

He employs a publicist.

Weitsman, president of Upstate Shredding, based in Owego in Tioga County, lives large while straddling the disparate worlds of his twin passions: hard-charging junk dealer by day, knowledgeable art collector by night.

Now, Weitsman has donated one of the world's largest private collections of 19th-century American decorated stoneware, valued at about $10 million, to the State Museum.