I do mean a thing, not a person. So, your jillion year old grandmother does not qualify. (Besides, no matter how much you hate your old, grumpy father, he is not a thing.)
The thing must have been manufactured or hand-crafted. This means the 4 billion year old moon rock you stole from NASA does not qualify, either.
By who, where and how it was created do not matter.
You must own it or have inherited it. I’d also be interested to hear about things you do not own but have seen in the possession of others. Please, no dinosaur skeletons. Nobody owns them. (They are all fakes anyway.)
In my house (and my mother’s) there are several ages-old things that ave passed down to use from generations past:
A 1901 British-India coin (must be worth a fortune if I were permitted to sell it)
A couple of pure-silver jugs we use for religious ceremonies. Both are over 150 years old
A yantrathat my great-grandfather handed down. He might have inherited it himself. Age unknown, lost in the mists of time.
My grandfather’s wooden rocking chair. Must be at least 70 years old. Still in amazingly good shape.
Once I raid my mother’s cupboard, I should uncover newer old items. My mother literally keeps a museum.
I have a stone tomahawk head that was found on my grandmother’s property. I’m assuming it is of Native American origin - and not sure how “new” it could be (I’d be curious as to when a good cutoff date would be).
I’ve got a coin from a sunken pirate ship that is from the 1600s.
Your stone NDN artifact could be thousands of years old, think they call those celts, or hammerstones…post it up at arrowheads or arrowheadology for an opinion…
I have a thick slice of petrified wood in the house it’s pretty old.
OUr dining room table and chairs came from the sears catalog in the 1800’s
Probably my china, which is circa 1918 or so. I don’t use it everyday, not because of its age or value (there really isn’t a whole lot of value there) but because it’s just not a pattern I would have picked if I’d chosen it for myself.
The oldest thing I use regularly is a KitchenAid stand mixer from 1941. It still works beautifully at 72 years old.
(I can’t remember who it was, but I remember many years ago in a thread, a French Doper wryly observed that he’s got furniture older than my country. )
My basement is full of late 1700’s to early 1800’s farming implements that my grandfather left to my parents (from his father/grandfather), who dumped it on me. I doubt it’s worth much, but I can’t really just get rid of it.
I am pretty sure it’s become a family practical joke, if I ever have children, maybe I’ll get to be the joker one day.
I have a handmade square nail, I’m not sure how old it is but I think from the 1800’s.
The house itself is over 100 years old, periodically I wonder whether there were any mementoes hidden while it was built. All we’ve found so far, doing renovations, are newspapers.
I have the steamer trunk my great grandmother used coming over from Bohemia in 1884.
I have my step grandmother’s sewing machine from the 1920’s and a few tchotchke’s she brought over from the Ukraine in 1916 or so.
My kitchen table came from my father’s grandmother’s farmhouse. I also have an album with his first Valentines Day cards - not terribly old (1940), but very sweet.
In my room I have my grandpa’s puttering chair. Very plan ladderback wood chair, the wicker seat long replaced with just a piece of wood. It was from his parent’s house. At his house, it sat in his garage. As he aged, he couldn’t stand for long, so he’d sit while he puttered around. He used it in the garden, too.
I have quite a few notebooks from my mother’s family, going back to 1870. Unfortunately, some are in Polish, some are in Bohemian and I read neither. Oddly, there’s also a hand written cookbook from my grandmother with recipes in Noweigan. She was 100% Polish and illiterate.
I was going to say the family bible, 1818. And then I remembered the fossils: a pile of shark’s teeth and a trilobite. I think there’s also some petrified wood in Celtling’s collection. I reckon the Trilobite would be the oldest?
I have an Italian antique silver crucifix fixed to an elaborate painted and gilt wooden frame which I bought in an antique shop in Puglia (southern Italy), which is estimated to be from c.1700-1750s. I’m sure there must be a special word for this sort of thing, but imagine an altar piece that hangs on the wall, like a private devotional altar.
I’m not Catholic - in fact, I’m an atheist - but it is a thing of great beauty and hangs in a prominent position in my living room. I may not believe in the mumbo, but I’m fascinated by the history of such pieces.
If so, I have a little bronze statue I picked up in Yemen. It’s either a shoddy fake made for gullible tourists or it’s real in which case it might be pre Islamic which means 1,400 years old or more.
Our house was built in 1911 and the majority of the knick knacks are from that era. Roseville and Weller pottery and other items of that Arts & Crafts era are everywhere. We have one guest bedroom dedicated to the Suffragist movement with pictures and postcards from then.
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