I don’t have a geiger counter but I’m guessing if it was too radioactive they wouldn’t allow it into the country.
Some amazing answers here, it’s like a virtual museum. Maybe I should have asked what object you would put in the Straight Dope Museum.
I hope nobody will mind a mild hijack: Yzerman is a genuine good guy. I witnessed him visit a young girl in the hospital who was a giant Red Wing fan. Yzerman walked in with no security, no media, incognito wearing street clothes and a baseball cap, and visited at her bedside by himself for more than an hour. This was in stark contrast to every other celebrity visit I have seen, which were all obvious PR moves.
As for interesting object, best I can do is an intact, unused ticket to the 1980 NHL All Star game.
mmm
I really think you’re winning at this point.
IMHO pro hockey players are more down to earth than other pro athletes. Most of them are “regular guys”.
I have a note written on scratch paper that I found in a small heap of trash.
What makes it interesting is that I picked it up in Pyongyang, North Korea.
The North Korean authorities do an amazing job of keeping ordinary people there separated from the outside world – even from the handful of visitors from abroad. So, very few clues are available about ordinary people’s lives and interests.
Foreign journalists and academics have tried to glean information from North Korean garbage before. (It’s challenging – for one thing, in Pyongyang there are not even garbage cans on the streets.) A South Korean professor wrote an entire book about food wrappers he salvaged close to the North Korean coast and what they revealed about the North’s economy!
But a discarded note is a much rarer and more revealing find than a food wrapper.
Typically, foreign visitors to North Korea are constantly chaperoned by a minder. But once when we were in a city park, I was able to escape the minder’s gaze for a few minutes, and that’s when I found this note.
The note is a diagram of how traditional Korean medicine affects the human body’s major organs.
Part of the control system of the heli involved in this:
Found just a couple of years ago, more than 30 years after the event. The crash was over a remote part of the canyon, and the color is the same as the limestone rubble.
It was quite bizarre (and macabre) to randomly come across it while hiking across the Tonto platform in the canyon. I had vaguely heard of the incident, but I had no idea at the the time that it happened at that location. But I used to fly this type of helicopter, so I knew immediately exactly what it was, something I’ve inspected many times in pre-flight checks.
I have a copy of the New Testament printed in 1578.
A wooden carved Welsh trousseau chest that my many times great-uncle made for his sister, Elinor Edwards, my many times great-grandmother, in 1866, as a wedding gift.
When we were cleaning out my parents’ condo, my brother and I flipped a coin for it. I won. It was the only thing I really wanted in the distribution.
The g-g-great uncle was a “joiner” and there are no nails in the chest. All held together by dowel pegs.
I also have a number of cool items that my paternal grandfather (who was born in the 19th century) made in metal shop, including an iron umbrella stand and a deer-hoof knife. And I have a few of his big, leather-bound scrapbooks in which he collected fine prints (e.g. Currier & Ives) and other things of interest (including a mint-condition Honus Wagner baseball card…that somehow got lost 
).
A couple Dutch landscapes from the early 19th century, of modest worth. But I do get some joy from them.
Three autographs I have that I think are interesting:
An Islamic pamphlet signed by Muhammed Ali.
A photo of the Moon signed by astronaut Jim Lovell.
A Gold’s Gym weight belt signed by Lou Ferrigno.
Yeah, I was thinking “Interesting to whom…” is a key question. I have a copy of Isis Unveiled by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky which appears to be dedicated but unsigned by the author (samples of her handwriting that I’ve seen on line appear to be a match). I need to tell Trep jr that when I croak, someone, somewhere will really, really want that.
Elsewhere I have a small piece of the (joint) largest sound mirror that was ever built (on the left in this photo). (Hey, the concrete was crumbled and lying on the floor - if they ever get round to repairing it, they’ll use new concrete). That’s interesting to me.
j
It looks like it’s made out of wood.
An original poster from the 1956 American release of Godzilla.
Probably the lighting, it’s dull gray in natural light. Very little corrosion on it. It’s the stationary side of the swashplate that the guy has his left hand on here:
Rubble from the Redwall limestone in the Grand Canyon is the same gray.
I too have a piece of the Berlin Wall.
I have my Uncle Max’s dentures. At first I thought this was strange. But, the relative who gave them to me said I was always doing weird art stuff with his old things and why should this be any different. I am disappointed it didn’t snow this year so I could make a snow man with a very authentic smile and a glass eye.
An Alien Pops display alien head with lid and sign.
A Mcneal pharmeceuticals statue of the Meso American Shroom god IIRC Teonan;catl.
A wire recorder- it needs repairing.
A piece of humorous military/Tank-themed artwork, autographed by David Drake.
I posted this in another thread but I have a Monique Montil “creature” that were models for the critters in Christoper Moore’s A Dirty Job and Secndhand Souls.
I have a postcard from Isaac Asimov answering a question I asked him.
In those days, it practically was “new.”
I’m loving this thread. Fasinating.