About 20 years ago I found a ivory Fiesta cream soup bowl (as marked by the seller) at an estate sale. It was priced at $30 which I thought was a bit steep. I offered $20 and that offer was accepted. Got home and found it was a very rare covered onion soup bowl without the lid. A few years later at a huge antique sale in Portland, Found someone selling an ivory cream soup bowl with a lid from a covered onion soup bowl. The seller thought is was a rare onion soup bowl and it was priced at $400. She was disappointed when she found out it wasn’t what she thought it was. She accepted my $100 offer. Got home, paired up the onion soup lid and bowl. Showed off my find on a Fiesta collectors forum. Even though I did not offer it for sale, I received a number of offers, the highest being $600. That set is the featured item of my vintage Fiesta collection to this day.
IMHO usually when people try to add value to an antique or collectable by modifying it, they make it a worthless piece of crap. A massive exception to this rule is The Dragon’s Eye. As some of you may know, a type of glass called Vaseline Glass contains uranium. When you expose Vaseline Glass to ultraviolet light, it glows. So @Elindsey, surrounded an old Vaseline Glass marble with a ring of UV light emitting diodes. The result is worth far more than it was before and is transcendantally beautiful. When you plug in the battery, the glass glows, gleams and flickers like a dragon’s eye.
He gave me one of the Eyes he made ( I am forever grateful). I took an old boardgame box, a green suede vest and incorporated the Dragon’s Eye into a replica of Abul Alhazred’s dread Necronomicon. I like to think I further added value. If whoever gets the Necronomicon when I die disagrees, they can easily remove the Dragon’s Eye.
ETA It is considerably more impressive in person. The GIF utterly fails to capture it.
ETA I say when I die only becaue I am not giving away or selling such a treasure so long as I draw breath.
I have the Italian horn that my dad wore pinned to his undershirt when he was a baby.
I have a very nicely typed and signed letter from Margaret Mitchell to a fan, in which she explains why she never gives autographs.
I have some vintage baseball cards that were actually cards that my late father bought in his youth and we found cleaning out his parents house in the 80s. He gave them to me and while they are worth something it’s not as much as you’d imagine.
They are all 1948 Bowman and include (2) Stan Musial rookie cards, (2) Yogi Berra rookie cards, and a Warren Spahn rookie card.
While in good condition they are far from mint.
I’d probably be lucky to get $1K for all of them so I’ll just be passing them on to my son.
I owe a 1910 Singer treadle sewing machine, which I restored to working order. I also own a “portable” Singer from the late 1940’s/early 1950’s which I likewise restored to working order.
I also own a 180 year old spinning wheel. As various bits had been replaced over the years as they wore out it’s not in pristine condition but it is a working wheel. Well, OK, I have (another) small repair to make, but I expect it will still be a working machine when it hits 200. You can see the marks of the smith’s hammer on the handmade nails used on some parts.
I have a walking stick with a white marble knob on the top, as well as a small revolver with a matching marble grip. The gun has an engraving dedicating them to a local lawman, but I’m still not sure who they were. I need to find out sometime. My Dad picked them up and semi-smuggled them back (I think out west, but not 100%).
I have a copy of the book “The Quiet Earth,” the source of the 1980s movie of the same name. Not easy to find.
Also a recording of Rod Serling’s take on “A Christmas Carol” called “A Carol for Another Christmas.”
I have a copy of (wrestling manager) Gary Hart’s autobiography.
Books. Lots of books.
First, I have this:
A copy of the New Testament printed in 1578. This book, the physical copy that sits on my desk, has been in existence since Shakespeare and Galileo were just barely teenagers. It was printed when Guy Fawkes was a child. It was printed a decade before Oliver Cromwell was even born. It had been sitting on a shelf somewhere for three decades when Jamestown was established in Virginia. It was printed when the Ming Dynasty was still in existence. It was old when the Dutch discovered Australia.
I’m not big on things, other than books, but this one stands out.
I also have a first edition, first printing of the US edition of The Bare-Faced Messiah, the biography of L. Ron Hubbard that the Church of Scientology spent years trying to get squashed. They weren’t successful but subsequent printings were delayed while the lawsuits worked their way through the courts. Many of the first edition copies were sent to schools and libraries from which they were subsequently stolen. Few of the early copies exist today.
I have the full and unabridged print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. That sucker is big. Well, those suckers are.
I have a very small and modest collection of spaceflight and aviation memorabilia which includes:
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A large, framed full Earth photo from Apollo 17, signed by the commander, Gene Cernan (most recent person to have walked on the moon)
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A paperback of Apollo 13 signed by Jim Lovell
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A paperback of “A Man on the Moon” signed by the author, Andrew Chaikin. He also signed my DVDs of the HBO miniseries made from the book.
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A Concorde pen, which was given to passengers. I don’t know if this one was actually flown, but I suspect not.
And my favorite…
- A tiny piece of cardboard which was part of a checklist on Apollo 17. It went to the lunar surface and spent three days there in the lunar module before returning to Earth.
I’m on a break. I’ll take and post photos tonight.
I have a small bronze statuette. It’s obviously a person in ceremonial garb and a plumed helmet. I had no idea what exactly it was supposed to be or where it came from (my Mom got it for me at a garage sale) until my Mom (I have a great Mom) took me to an exhibit on the Olmec. My stattuette is an Olmec priest. I think it was originally the hilt of a ceremonial dagger. I don’t know if it is authentic or a replica.
I have an old carbide headlight for bicycles. It’s probably late 19th or early 20th century.
I also have a memo or letter, that my dad snagged from Berlin in the weeks after VE day with Nazi letterhead and Adolph’s signature (whether his actual or a stamp or something I don’t know), plus a variety of other miscellaneous items including a couple of medals and a photograph my dad took of an Arado 234 Blitz bomber.
And I have a Judas Priest guitar pick signed by Andy Sneap, their current touring guitarist, thrown out to the audience during a concert in Ottawa in 2018.
Nah. It’s one I bought on eBay and sent to Ade’s agent in England and he graciously signed it and sent it back!! Although I suppose of all the vintage cricket bats in the world, that one could have been a prop on TYO…I think I bought it from a seller in Milwaukee.
And dang, Dopers have some pretty neato stuff. We could have a really awesome “quirky shit” museum!!
There is some pretty cool stuff here.
@kayaker your chair is way cooler than mine, and my son and I had a very similar conversation about the thing.
@ZipperJJ you know the Squirrel Nut Zippers? I have some of their songs on almost every playlist I have. Very fun group to listen to.
@DocCathode, love the romantic bat pickle.
Yeah I used to hang out with them (hence the Zipper in my name!) Long story. But none of my friends are still in the band so I don’t mess with their new stuff. Their 3 original albums are perfection and their live shows were so much fun!
I have to know: did you marry her?
There were 24 unique tix printed for the HoF ceremony; they were printed on 4 separate sheets of six tix each. There is exactly one set of uncut tix in existence; I own it! While I have no intention of getting rid of them, I did inquire to a couple of card/collectible dealers as to it’s worth, as in should I insure them on a valuable property rider. Sadly, I was told not much (which is why I inquired to a couple of places); I was hoping for Honus Wagner card value.
Each one is about 1½’ x 2’ & I haven’t decided how to frame them, all in one frame (quite large) or as four separate frames (more expensive).
Native American artifacts from my home area in central Ohio near the Indiana boarder. Arrowheads, axe heads, banner stones, stone grinding pestles, tomahawks, fishing weights and an half of iron nodule/concretion that appears to have been handled by people a lot. The last one gets people scratching there heads a lot because it fits right in your hand, is fairly unique and has quite the patina built up from obvious human use.
I collected and traded among friends for about 20 years to build up my collection. I pretty much remember or know where about everyone of them came from.
Amongst other items of curiousa:
A personally autographed photo of John Wayne (who I never met)
A rare copy of Anthropological Studies on the Strange Sexual Practices of All Races and All ... - Iwan Bloch - Google Books
A resin bust of the great Yokozuna Takanohana
A demolished James Bond Aston Martin battery-operated toy produced by Gilbert in the late 1960s (I used to have two of them; now I have a little less than one)
A couple of the now-very hard-to-find Thor Lords, which I have always thought of as sort of “Great Old Ones on wheels” - Little Weirdos: Mini figures and other monster toys: Thor Lords: bizarro '80s fantasy pull-back toys!
A Toongat - https://www.jstor.org/stable/40316564. Mine is vintage and came from somewhere in Alaska (you don’t want to know what it’s made out of) - Imgur: The magic of the Internet
And lastly, my dragon. Free-standing (about 2 feet tall), paper mâché, painted, horned, reaching out, sticking out its tongue: one of a kind Mexican folk art. Sorry, no pictures; he’s shy.
All have stories attached to them, and memories, and I’m grateful they (and more) have survived to this day.
ETA: My brother used to own the fake arm of Sid Haig that is cut off in Galaxy of Terror (1981), but it got moldy and toxic and had to be thrown away after many years.
I did not marry her. Our love was fierce but disfunctional. She eventually married somebody else. He’s a great man and has been very good for her. The three of us are close and I expect to have them both in my life until death separates us. She sends me e-mails on shared nerdy interests every now and then. I’d visit more often but it’s 2 hours by SEPTA each way.