Driving home the other day I heard a radio programme asking listeners to ring in with the oldest thing in their house. Lots of people had old family heirlooms and furniture that sounded wonderful.
I got to thinking about what I had lying about, and remembered that hidden in a box upstairs, I have a mosquito, cased in amber (shades of Jurassic Park). I reckon that must go close to being a record for an ‘old thing’
Anyone else have any interesting stuff?
I’ve got some dinosaur bones and shark teeth that are at least 65,000,000 years old.
Slightly newer is a mid 1700s British Coin I have in my safe.
The scoop we use to fill the sugar bowl was originally a tin can from Ireland, converted by a tinsmith over 100 years ago.
I’m fairly certain I have some protons that are about 12,500,000,000 years old.
Buuuuuut after that would come a Greek coin from the time of Alexander the Great. Followed by a Roman coin and then a bunch of world coins from the mid 1800s till now.
I used to have the marriage certificate from my great great aunt. She had gotten married in 1900. But I gave it to a direct descendant of hers.
The oldest thing that’s been in my family continuously is my grandmother’s birth certificate from 1914. It’s in pretty bad shape though but I’m taking good care of it. So that would be my final answer an 88 year old birth certificate.
Well, it’s not that old, but neither am I 
I have my grandmother’s grandmother’s crystal collection. Other pieces have been added to it over the years. I also have my great-grandmothers antique mirror.
I was astounded that no other grandchild cared for old-style cut crystal. My grandmother knew I would appreciate it the most, I think.
The oldest natrual thing in my house are two 50,000,000 year old fossils of Knightia alta fish.
I have a handful of roman coins but I’ve not identified their age (they are pretty worn). I have a few other coins in the early 1800’s age.
Hmm. I don’t have that many old things, I guess.
My apartment itself is from 1934, if that counts. In it, I’d say my Jugendstill Junghans clock is the oldest. It’s from approximately 1915, 1920.
HAH! Found something else. I have a framed bond, issued by a Belgian electric company in 1910. Very pretty, and in excellent shape.
Also, I have a very old looking hand-drawn map of Southern Africa (in French, no less), but given how much I paid for it, my money’s on “fake”. It looks at thought it’s straight from the 17th century, but it’s probably more late 20th century-ish.
My Mom. 1923
Me.
My husband’s family has, to my knowledge, never thrown ANYTHING away, and is currently in the process of getting elderly and distributing the booty to this generation. Thus, we have:
A portion of a weaving done by my husbands great-great-great grandmother, signed and dated 1824.
A buncha quilts, the oldest from 1899.
Some buttons from the 1760s.
Old photos - the oldest date I can find on one is 1816. And one of the neatest ones shows my husband’s grandmother on board the Olympia (one of the Titanic’s sister ships, I think. That one is dated 1914.)
Abigail Adams’s sugar bowl. (Really.)
Not counting the house itself, which is supposed to be around 100 years old (I keep meaning to look into its history but have never had the time), I’d have to say my wife. smack What? What’d I say?
Actually, I probably have some books which were printed before 1934 in my library. I remember having a book written by an American who enlisted in the British army during WWI which I think was published shortly after the war - can’t remember the title but IIRC the author’s name was Guy Empey (sp?).
I sort of doubt either the date or the fact that’s a real photo, as modern photography only dates back to 1839. What kind of picture is it?
Not counting mineral samples and the like, the oldest thing I can think of is an embroidery sampler done by an ancestor of mine about 1805, give or take 5 years.
The oldest thing kicking around here that I can verify is a scrapbook put together by my great grandmother’s great aunt. It consists of humorous newspaper clippings dated from 1809-1812 pasted into a ledger (it looks like they were building a new house with new furniture). The ledger includes items such as four bushels of horse hair (thirty five cents), six laborers for the day (twenty five cents), timber, etc.
My house itself was built in 1760 and is still largely original. We have tons of furniture from about that same period also.
My Grandmother gave me a beaded purse that her Grandmother had given her when she was a child. I’m guessing it’s about 130 years old.
OK, you’re probably right - technically, it is not a photograph, it’s a tintype sort of thing. From what I understand, real tintypes have a funny effect - if you turn them in your hand so the light hits at various angles, the black parts sort of reflect. (I’m sure there’s a name for this phenomenon, but damned if I know what it is.)
We also have a bunch of old photographic images (don’t know if they’re tintypes or what) that were mounted on postcards that we THINK date from even earlier in the 1800s, although no one in the family is quite sure. However, one of them is a picture my mother-in-law thinks was her great-grandfather as a very young man, so we estimate around 1810.
If you had seen this cheese I took out of my refrigorator yesterday…never mind. It wasn’t quite as old as a copy of Life on the Mississippi published over 100 years ago.
I have a precambrian rock that I took from a road side mountain cut.
The oldest man made object…some silver dollar coins from the 1890’s.
A copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene published in 1870 in Edinburgh.