something that was junk then, but valuable now.
I started reading comics back when they were still doing sf stories, so I got the first Spiderman, Thor, and Fantastic Four books. I had two copies of the first Superman annual (all of $0.25!) All gone - I never imagined they’d be worth anything.
My brother and I collected all the Invaders from Mars card, and had them in a nice book. They were worth quite a bit when the movie came out.
What valuable stuff did your parents throw out?
Growing up I always heard the stories about parents throwing out baseball cards. My dad said he had some Mickey Mantles that his mom chucked. I never liked baseball, so I collected comic cards. And I still have them!
Too bad they’re worth poop.
In the 1950s when I was in high school I collected Arkham House books. I had about 20 in pristine condition lined-up in their dust-jackets sitting on a shelf in my room. One day I decided they would look “cooler” if you could see all the black and gold bindings. So I threw away all the dust-jackets. Now, of course, the dust-jackets are worth more than the books.
Christmas, I think it was 1978. My mother worked an extra job all summer so she could ensure that I was going to get everything Kenner made in Star Wars toys. She took me and my cousin to see the movie that previous year, and it changed my life. That Christmas I had everything Lucas saw fit to license to Kenner. Everything from the Death Star to several X-Wings and Tie Fighters, The Falcon, the creature Cantina, many action figures, several duplicates, everything. She bought me shit that wasn’t even in the movie (The Stormtrooper Transport with the C3PO and Artoo voice when you pushed the button and other shit)!
But, because she particularly remembered the scene in the beginning of the movie where Artoo was abducted by Jawas, she understood that for her son to be able to recreate the scene with his toys he’d need several of those little critters.
So she bought me twenty of them. Fucking TWENTY of the vinyl-caped Jawas! If you know anything about the value of Star Wars collectibles, then you just soiled yourself. She :smack: bought :smack: me :smack: twenty :smack: of :smack: the :smack: most :smack: expensive :smack: collector’s :smack: pieces :smack: in :smack: the :smack: Star :smack: Wars :smack: Galaxy :smack: (short of the unreleased Boba Fett that came out later) :smack: and :smack: I :smack: distinctly :smack: remember :smack: ripping :smack: each :smack: of :smack: them :smack: from :smack: their :smack: packs!
Fuck, now I have a headache…
Through the use of old Christmas photographs to estimate everything I had and comparing it to price guides, I took the time once and added all of it up to see how much money we were talking about…
IIRC, I had four or five of the Nolan Ryan rookie baseball cards. I think they topped out at $1500 back in mid '80s?
Then had I taken the $6K and bought stock in Apple!
I did the same thing witha set of books my sister gave me! It took me years to admit to it. I doubt they were or are worth money, though.
But can we really put a price on children’s happiness? 
Of course looking back on it and comparing the two we’d all rather have the money from the action figures, but it’s a little sad to know that having that money would be at the expense of memories of enjoying toys from a movie that “changed your life,” no?
Well, when you invent a time machine you can go back and be a dick to your past self. 
When I was young, I used to love to wander in our woods on our extensive land and build things. I especially liked to dig and build forts and things like that. One day I was digging and I hit a weird rock. It was about the size of a softball, red and completely glazed on one side. I knew it was a meteorite immediately and seeing some lesser ones in museums later confirmed it. It just disappeared but its was likely some type of Martian meteorite. I have no idea how much it world be worth but I would love to have it for myself anyway.
Not entirely to the specs of the OP, but: my great-grandfather’s commercial property in downtown San Francisco. Apparently during WW2 it was decided that Italians shouldn’t own property within a certain distance from the naval base, so the US government paid them pennies on the dollar and appropriated it.
Also, my dad was a voracious baseball card collector. When he shipped off to Vietnam, my grandmother cleaned out his room and tossed just about everything, including an enormous baseball card collection and an early edition Audubon folio. They were just getting rid of junk and clearing out closet space.
Perhaps not rich…
When my sister and I were very small, we raided the parents coin jar to buy ice cream cones. Shame that this particular coin jar was very old, and full of Mercury dimes and the like.
*A friend told me that when she was 13-14, she stole a bunch of silver dollars from her father to buy cigarettes :eek: *
Here’s a funny story. You won’t believe it, but I swear to its truth. Growing up, I had a friend who was a huge Star Wars geek. Like you, he had every single original Star Wars toy made, and we used to spend hours playing them after school. I wasn’t a fan, so I didn’t know what the toys “did.” When we would play, he used to say, “okay, pick whichever five things you want and I’ll pick one and we’ll fight!” Me, being an idiot, picked the giant spaceships and the coolest looking dudes and I wondered how he could possibly win in any sort of fight.
He picked Yoda. Every time. Hid him so I couldn’t find him under the mountain of toys when I tried to use the same stupid trick against him. I didn’t understand why at the time, but for some reason “the Force” could basically destroy any number of starships and people at one time, instantly.
That’s beside the point though. I clicked on eBay and searched for the jawa figure, curious as to which one it was and whether or not we ever played with it. I recognized it immediately, it was by far our least favorite of the toys. We used to mangle those suckers (he had a dozen or so), and we used them much like the Foot Clan from the Ninja Turtles, they were pieces of meat we demolished on our way to the “bosses.” We used them as target practice for his GI Joes, and dragged them through dirt, sand, mud, and worse, I imagine. I distinctly remember complaining about how shitty those vinyl capes were, and destroying at least four of them myself.
Sure hope those weren’t the ones selling for that exorbitant price now! Oops!