Maybe not interesting to some but I’m a glider pilot with my own glider. These things are like works of art, at least in my eyes. They are mostly hand built and relatively simple as aircraft go. That said, the engineering that goes into the design and craftsmanship in manufacturing is anything but simple. They just look like they should be flying, even when sitting on the ground. No one pays much attention to it at the airport but when I’ve displayed it at various events, it always draws a crowd. It not just the glider but the whole concept of staying airborne for hours and covering long distances that attracts the curious.
I have a lot of interesting things, I suppose. I have a Blake proof etching from his Book of Job, 1825, that my father-in-law picked up cheaply in New York between the wars. A civil war cavalry sword passed down from my husband’s ancestors, who fought on both sides. A New Guinea fetish made from a very small skull of some kind of antelope. A wooden votive folk-art statue of St. Benedict I found in an antique shop in Chimayo, New Mexico, probably late 18th century. A very good Tigre mask from Mexico, probably 19th century. A fair amount of modern art mostly made by friends, relatives, and myself. I’m just looking around the room here.
I have no interest in memorabilia or celebrities so I have nothing of that kind.
Don’t leave us hanging… unless it was “please never contact me again or I will call the police”.
Actually I wrote him a whole fan letter. In it I asked whether he was still writing the science column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He said that indeed, he still was, and gave me their contact information.
Years ago I was high bidder on EBay for a beautiful old leather bound bible that was autographed. It said , “Keep on trucking, Jesus”.
EBay closed the auction. I was pissed.
ETA: I think there was concern for provenance.
A piece of coal from the Titanic.
I don’t think there has ever been a clear ruling on whether the Holy Spirit is allowed to sign for Jesus.
A baseball thrown to me by Hall of Fame catcher Ivan Rodriguez.
Um, closest I got is a copy of The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes; my father gave it to me.
Or maybe the handmade marine iguana plush my dad got for me in the Galapagos.
I feel like finding out what is interesting to a person is part of the fun! Even if it’s not something I’m into or knowledgeable about, I love hearing people talk about something that’s grabbed them.
And in that vein, my chunk of brick from the church in Athens, GA where R.E.M. played their first gig springs to mind (it might not be the most interesting, but it’s one of the odder bits and pieces around here).
I’ve got lots of interesting things. I’ll go with a stainless steel oxygen tank liner from a Centaur rocket. They get welded together and wound with fiberglass to strengthen them. I polished one half and used it for a custom range hood when I remodeled my kitchen. I still have the other half.
My interesting objects tend to be more family connected.
I have 2 rubbings of grave carvings my mom made when we were in England. Husband and wife in Elizabethan garb.
A real Kukri that my dad bought when he was TDY in Nepal.
And the one I love most is a small globe made of gold (it even spins!) that is set with jewel chips marking places where either one of my parents have been. It’s family history on a necklace.
A Japanese WW2 dog tag.
I found it with a cheap metal detector buried about 4 inches in Georgia in our yard. The theory is that it was from a POW assigned to what was then a pig farm.
Most of the POWs were from Europe. Work details were trucked from camps.
My grandmother recalled seeing a handful of European POWs loitering around completely unguarded because they missed the truck ride back to camp.
I have one of those! (Without the sign.) Sometimes I use it when handing out Halloween candy.
I would love to try metal detecting.
Not sure about how much I’d enjoy the listening to static beeps buzzes.
But digging to discover an artifact or junk would be fun.
My treasured pieces are also artifacts found on my property. Accidentally discovered Indian artifacts, uniface, scrapers, gravers, brokes and debitage, manuports,
We were visiting family friends who had a ranch near the badlands in eastern Montana. We were walking the back trails on the ranch, checking out the cattle, and I asked if there were any fossils around here. He said “Lots!” just as I kicked up an egg-sized rock. I picked it up and kept it, and later learned it was a fossilized vertebrae of a sea turtle.
I have the bill of sale issued to my grandfather when he bought the land to build his farm dated in 1912. $10. There were some kind of homesteading rules that required the land to be cleared within a certain period of time and he had not much more than an axe to work with. (or so the story was told).
Reminds me of the United State brooch from The Dick Van Dyke Show.
I own a piece of the heat shield from one of the Gemini space missions, so it was actually in space. I forgot which one exactly since I have the heat shield in a box with other valuables, but basically my grandfather worked for McDonald Douglas at the time and they were handing them out in these clear lucite display boxes to various employees which is how we got a hold of one.
In a more skeevier interesting object, when I was in college I dated a woman who wound up being a small time movie actor. She’s been in some big movies but in very minor supporting roles but she gets steady work. When we dated in the 00s she took a Polaroid camera, snapped a bunch of nude shots of herself and sent them to me. I kept the snap shots and they’re somewhere in a box with all my college papers. So basically I have secret nudes of a celebrity in my house somewhere.
Did you check what was underneath it? And then did you check what was underneath that?