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#51
09-24-2006, 03:00 AM
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I have the key to a room on the fourth floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad. I was staying at the hotel in April, 2004 when the Shiite hit the fan and I had to drive to Turkey and walk out of the country. When I got to the states, I realized I still had the key (and they had my stuff).
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#54
09-24-2006, 05:30 AM
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I have two mammoth hairs. A friend of my family's was on an expedition to Siberia when they dug a frozen mammoth out of the ice. He brought some of the hairs back for me and my sister.
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#56
09-24-2006, 05:48 AM
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#57
09-24-2006, 06:15 AM
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Several weird gizmo's from the London Science Museum shop. Like sand that feels like wet sand under water, but is dry the very second it is out of the water. Or a black, self inflating personal air balloon.
An ivory Japanese tiny netsuke-statue. It depicts, in astonishing miniature detail, a monk with his hands tied behind his back, smiling serenely at the rats he shares his bread with. A book about my grandfather. He was a famous Dutch architect. A postcard of a French wedding,, ca 1880. It is in Black and white, but colored, as was the custom in those days. I bought it in 1985, so way before the days of Photoshop. Top row, second from the left is a woman who is the spitting image of Mick Jagger. Below her is a guy who uncannily resembles John Cleese. A third girl in the picture looks like the Mona Lisa would if she had lived in the South of France in 1880. The picture is not a fake; it's just that the human face has only so much variety and some faces have to be used several times over history. 
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#58
09-24-2006, 06:45 AM
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A cannon ball.
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#60
09-24-2006, 09:23 AM
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I don't really own anything all that unusual. Or, at least, I have some things that would be considered somewhat unusual in the US, but that were really not too uncommon where they came from. Among other weird things I have are:
1. A few teabags of coca leaf tea. I stuck them in my backpack and forgot about them at the end of a trip to Ecuador. They're not particularly rare or interesting anywhere in the Andes, I think, but you don't find them much here in North America. 2. A business card from an Andean (Kichwa) shaman. No, I'm not making that up. 3. A set of Russian nesting dolls from the late 80s/early 90s. Each doll is in the likeness of an important political figure from Russia or the USSR. The biggest doll is Yeltsin. The smallest is Tzar Nicholas II. (I don't know how common dolls like that are these days. For all I know, this set of dolls will be a historic item in a couple of decades.) 4. A 10-cruzeiro (defunct Brazilian currency) coin. 5. My insect collection, which includes some pretty interesting specimens.
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#61
09-24-2006, 11:51 AM
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#62
09-24-2006, 12:48 PM
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Piece of the Berlin Wall
What I think is a stone age arrow head/chiselling type thingy Lava from Etna A WW2 Iron Cross, 2nd class A German Officers peaked cap, also WW2 A Hitler youth dagger without scabbard A collection of miniature British phone booths, 12 in all each about 2" high
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#63
09-24-2006, 01:21 PM
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#64
09-24-2006, 01:49 PM
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I have a piece of yellow legal paper with ALL (sans the goalies) the autographs of the 1997 Stanley cup chapion Detroit RedWings...personalized to my two boys...
Mail order tickets from the last three nights of a six night stand of Grateful Dead shows at the Boston Gardens...this was to be the last event at the Gardens before demolition...sadly Jerry died the DAY I got them. A set of russian nesting dolls (really russian) painted in my sons Hockey team sweaters with all his former numbers...the faces look stoicaly russian.
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#65
09-25-2006, 10:46 PM
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I really onlyhave two pretty rare items that come to mind right now....A killer whale tooth.....a Casio Cosmo watch that shows accurately the position of all planets circling the sun (well, at least the traditional 9 planets) and Haley's comet, all circling the sun.....
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#67
09-25-2006, 11:13 PM
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Human skull....yada, yada, yada...got one of those.
Fossils...yawn, whatever. However.... I have a large collection of coral bits (I was staying on a beach where about 40,000 new pieces washed up every morning, broken by the surf off the nearby reef.) in the shape of letters. Some upper case, some lower case, all of which occured naturally. I stayed on the beach for about 4 wks, it started quite innocent really. Whenever I would walk the beach I pick things up and go, "Hey, look a 'q'.", yeah, no one really cared. Soon, I could spell a couple of words out on my bungalow porch. The first phrase I could construct : Lazy, lazy, fool. And I was hooked. I never walked the beach that I wasn't on the watch. And then it spread through the community like an infection. People were bringing me letters they'd found on the beach. People I'd never met, it seems, were stopping by the porch (where the letters were but one pile of accumulating sea treasure. There were seashells, of course. Sea shell bits. Sea glass. Skeletal remains. Feathers. Well, I'm sure you get the picture). In no time I had a whole alphabet. But you can't spell much with only one of each letter so it grew and grew. Phrase became sentence, sentence neared paragraph. When it was time to leave the beach it was clear I could not take back all the treasure I'd collected. What to leave? What to take? Of course, feathers and seashells are gifts from the God's so they had to go. I toyed with leaving the now large collection of letters behind, but in the end I couldn't do it. It came home in my luggage and now resides in a tray on my porch. But I am still enchanted with them and often spell out greetings for guests and special occasions. Though largely the world doesn't understand their purpose or my attraction to them, with a little encouragement they grow as enchanted as I with them. I'd be willing to bet I'm the only person with such a collection and it would definitely qualify as my most unique possession.
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#70
09-27-2006, 03:09 PM
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#71
09-27-2006, 03:16 PM
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A wire recorder (in need of minor repairs)
An award commemorating 15 years of diode matrix manufacturing by Radiation Incorporated. A clay pipe done in preColumbian style. A man is sitting on the bowl and the stem is a snake protruding from between his legs. To smoke the pipe you have to perform oral sex on the man /kiss a snake
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#72
09-27-2006, 03:34 PM
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Oh I forgot to mention my Stevie Ray Vaughn autograph. It was written on a slip of paper that had a friends name and phone number on the other side. It has a little tear where the pen went through the paper. I had to turn around and he used my shoulder like a table. He was quite short.
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#73
09-27-2006, 03:36 PM
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WWI officer's binoculars (wth original leather strap)
A turn or the century stapler. An ornate barometer/thermometer A 'Bo' stick An incense burner shaped like a kneeling camel A 'star wars' poster that says 'Revenge of The Jedi' Chinese artwork inlaid book-ends A complete works of Shakespeare in olde english (circa 1920s) A pair of pliers that were hand-forged on an anvil (pre-1920s) An Atari 800 Computer (still works) A TI-99 Computer (not so much) A one foot by 3 feet cardboard poster of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale for President, in Spanish. "Para Neuvo Commienzo" (still hope to get that autographed someday) A Pinewood Derby trophy from 1973 A sterling money-clip circa 1950s engraved with "After Taxes"
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#74
09-27-2006, 03:50 PM
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I don't really own anything unique. At least nothing as exciting as mammoth hairs or human skulls.
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#75
09-27-2006, 03:55 PM
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Wow am I mundane. The most interesting thing I have might be the metal plates used to print photos in the newspaper of my parents and friends posing at a dance in the early 60s. Grandpa was the society photographer and must have purloined the plates.
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#77
09-27-2006, 04:04 PM
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elbows could you post a picture of your letters for us? Your collection sounds really neat!
The only thing remotely unique I own is an antique cricket bat signed by Ade Edmonson (a famous British comedian). He was nice enough to sign a bat that I bought on eBay and send it back to me. Only I don't have it yet. Sent it out in May and according to his agent the bat is still at his house waiting to be returned to her so she can return it to me. Hopefully I have it by Christmas  Since I don't own anything fun, exciting or unique I thought about what I'd WANT to own that would be fun, exciting and unique and that is what I came up with. Technically I own it....it's just slow coming home.
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#78
09-27-2006, 04:04 PM
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The alien head display from Alien Pops lollipops
A can of tomatoes autographed by John Astin A lighter made from some kind of high caliber bullet A ceramic face with eyes made of partially melted shards of glass The official All My Children boardgame A Lego telephone
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#80
09-27-2006, 08:39 PM
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#81
09-28-2006, 01:56 AM
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A Howard the Duck original drawing promoting the 40th anniversary of a radio station where I was then working (this was 1980). I commissioned the drawing at a comic book show, thinking it would be used as a poster, but it never was.
A sperm whale tooth scrimshawed with a sailing ship labeled "Glade" and the date 1848 A photo of me with Dick Clark A large original drawing of Alley Oop and Oona riding Dinny the dinosaur, hand-colored by artist Jack Bender and signed by him and his wife Carole (the strip's writer) dedicated to me after I did an interview with them a few years agoon the 70th anniversary of the strip. (The newspaper at which I work has carried the strip every single day from its origin in 1933.) A netsuke of a monkey crouched over a human skull. A piece of pre-Columbian pottery with animal faces on each of its tripod legs. The legs are hollow and have clay balls inside that rattle when the bowl is shaken. An 8 reales "piece of 8" minted in 1804.
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#83
09-28-2006, 07:07 AM
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Depressingly mundane; I've got lots of ordinary fossils and nicknacks and stuff, but the only candidate object I can offer for this thread is an unopened commemorativel labelled can of Fosters Lager, from the maiden voyage of the Oriana.
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#85
09-28-2006, 08:07 AM
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Ignatz, I as well have A Timex Sinclair 1000 computer with 16k RAM and a 16k RAM extension pack, and its user manual which is bigger than it. It is used with a cassette player to load programs and a tv set to monitor. I really thought I was the only one until I just looked on eBay.
I own a chunk of glass from Ball Glass Inc, it fell on the floor next to me when I was touring the factory, and I got to keep it as a souvenir. I also have a real berimbau, and was flagged for a few years from American Airlines because I caused a ruckus to make sure I could take it on the plane.
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#86
09-28-2006, 09:40 AM
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Unique, but not strange: We have plenty of one-of-a-kind original art in our house.
Somewhat unique. Somewhat strange: I have two nice chunks of petrified wood (acquired legally). They're 175,000,000 years old. Strange, but doubtfully unique: I have an iron monkey whose arms and hands are shaped like a "S". I hang him from a cabinet pull and he holds bananas. I found him in an antique store once, and I've never seen his equal.
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#89
09-28-2006, 10:11 AM
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Okay, I'll try.
A collector likes nothing more than an opportunity to display their collection, after all! Having never posted a photo before, I'm going to read stickies now, (they should make a stickie called Dope 101). Wish me luck, I'll be back....
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#90
09-28-2006, 10:20 AM
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Scribble, I accept your 10 cruzado coin, and offer up my 100,000 cruzeiro bill, which was thelast currency before the real. Just think, $100,000!!! I told my mother I was a millionaire when I had 1.4M upon exchanging $150 USD!
Almost forgot my prized possession: a RCA microphone from the 1930s, which my grandfather took from Ft. Monmouth when they got rid of the signal school. Also got the 2 radar magnets as well.
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#91
09-28-2006, 10:27 AM
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Two of the momentos I brought home from my trip to Berlin in 93 have already been mentioned, but I'm gonna say them anyway.
- a "genuine" chunk of the wall, complete with stenciled image of the Brandenburg Gate. - Nesting dolls painted with the images of (from smallest to largest): Lenin, Stalin, Kruzchev, Brezhnev, Chernienko, & Gorbachov. I also have a modest collection of Roman coins, most of which are unidentifiable bronze slugs, plus one silver denarius (w portrait of Septimus Severus). There is one, however, that is worth mentioning. It's a bronze as from around 330 AD, showing Constantine on one side and an image of Sol Invictus on the other. Which means that we have the first "Christian" emperor, together with the Roman god whose feast day was celebrated on the winter solstice (December 25 by the Roman calendar). Nice little touch of historical irony. I carry that coin with me as a conversation piece. I picked up a piece of sea glass on a rocky beach at Napflion in Greece. It looks too thick to be from a modern beer or wine bottle, but who knows? It's very pretty -- a luminous green that turns almost black when wet. When my father's mother died about ten years ago, we cleaned out her house to prepare it for sale. One of the items we found (and the only thing I claimed) was an old desk fan right out of a 40s private eye flick. My father tells me it was the first oscillating fan ever sold in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and caused something of a stir in the neighborhood when his parents brought it home. When I've saved up a little money, I'm going to see if I can get someone to restore it. A few other things worth mentioning that aren't mine per se, but are in the family. My mom's grandfather lived on a farm in Kentucky that was once home to a Cherokee (I think) village. For years, tilling the soil was followed by the ritual of looking for arrowheads, and quite a number of them were found, along with at least one war club. My parents have a framed aerial photo of the farm, with a few of these arrowheads set into cut out spaces in the matting. During WWII, a number of German P.O.W.s were held at Fort Knox. My mom's father was a contract worker on base, and since he spoke some German, spent time overseeing a couple of the prisoners. One of them had been a woodcarver before joining the Wehrmacht, and, using some scraps of wood and dull razor blades, carved a beautiful image of two songbirds on a treebranch. He crafted a frame for it, coating the wood with a sawdust texture. Before leaving to head back to Germany at the end of the war, he presented it to my grandfather. That carving is one of my family's most prized possessions.
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#92
09-28-2006, 10:29 AM
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An original, un-numbered copy of the Book of the Fine Arts Building by Ella Wilkinson Peattie, 1911 (it says in the book that only 1,000 were printed). A friend of mine who did the electrical renovations years ago gave it to me - he found it under the stage.
A check for $8 or so from Barry "The Fish" Melton made out to me and a letter from him regarding Country Joe and The Fish along with a signed photo from his personal collection (long story - a gift I spent months putting together for my husband years ago). An 8-Track recorder. Not player, recorder. An upside down brass horse and paddock on a compass on my ceiling. I know. You should see the REST of the place. 
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#93
09-28-2006, 10:52 AM
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Here we go...
Wish me luck....
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l5...1/IMG_0002.jpg and http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l5...1/IMG_0003.jpg
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#94
09-28-2006, 10:54 AM
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#97
09-28-2006, 11:12 AM
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#98
09-28-2006, 11:22 AM
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Unique: A practise piece by Theo Leffman...if I ever go to Chicago I'll have to see if they have any of her stuff hanging in "her" memorial gallery. (I got it because my mom cleaned her Longboat Key home and helped transfer her art to Chicago and got to pick a piece for each of us out of the non-museum-worthy pieces.)
Strange: A dollar-store plastic dinosaur that's been repainted by me in much better colors despite the fact that I'm a pretty bad painter (which tells you how good it was originally.) Then its tail has been painted as a candy cane with a nipple-pink end. I'm giving it to a friend's granddaughter (I'm giving her grandson a repainted Dragons Metal Ages Megablok dragon, again, much better painted.) Quote:
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#99
09-28-2006, 11:44 AM
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#100
09-28-2006, 12:38 PM
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Several Eastern Bloc items have been mentioned, but I will add my name to the list of Berlin Wall chippers, I have a small box filled with pieces. I also have a Soviet Air Force coat and cap, that I traded a pair of Levi's for in Leningrad (St. Petersburg).
My current job is author escort, so as a result, I have a lot of signed books, so many I don't consider them unusal anymore, but several people have mentioned them. I've got Vonnegut, Bradbury, Douglas Adams, William Golding (not Lord of the Flies) David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, etc. In addition to books, I collect old tools. This includes what is probably my most unusal item. An antique (about 1890) slaughterhouse saw, technically, a beef-splitting saw with a 30 inch blade. It looks like a very large and sturdy hacksaw.
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Good Og, I honestly never noticed that before, although that would explain the spring in his step. I think I'll only light the "don't walk" signal from now on...
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