I have a Colonial era brass button that we found in the dirt in the cellar of our house, along with some hand forged square nails. Also found a shoe in that same stratum, but it was so decayed we tossed it. The original owner of the farm was a captain in the Revolutionary War.
Tucked away somewhere that I cannot remember in my basement is a 35mm Simpsons cartoon that was originally attached to the beginning of “The War of the Roses” back in my projectionist days.
Given that I don’t know where that object is, second place goes to my original Seeburg 1000 Background Music System in fully working order, which I have modified to use a modern amplifier and a hidden Raspberry Pi to play mp3s of the same original Seeburg songs. It’s constantly playing in the background while I work.
I have kept the original parts as I removed them (speaker, cabinet light, and some wiring), so if I want to make it all stock it’s a basic reassembly job.
A 1912 floor-standing Victrola. It’s not particularly valuable and hasn’t been restored, but it is in mechanically sound condition and plays well. I also have about 75 33 rpm records I got with it (including “She Looks Like Helen Brown” by Paul Specht and His Orchestra).
Found it in an antique store in Cumberland, MD, in 1972 for $75. While loading it into the car, I heard something shift inside the record storage rack. Turned out to be an unopened pint of cheap brandy. Somebody was apparently hiding it from somebody. The bottle remains there to this day, though the antique store owner was concerned that she would get in trouble for selling liquor to me.
It sits in air-conditioned storage right now and I’d like to pass it on to someone. There’s little interest. Takes up valuable “floor space,” I guess…
This is the most interesting thing I don’t have.
When I was monitoring archaeological sites for the BLM I had to hike across miles of open desert between sites. On one hike, I came across a good sized hole someone had dug. At the bottom of the hole was the perfect imprint of a WW2 ammunition case. Why’d they dig there? You’d have to cover a lot of desert with a metal detector to end up in that place. They may have had a map, but the area has no landmarks and there were no test holes. They hit it square on. Didn’t look like the work of our local vandals and treasure hunters.
The imprint was firm clay that had filtered in over decades. The debris thrown out of the hole was lightly eroded like months or a year. The best scenario I can come up with is: the Los Alamos personnel who supported the Trinity bomb test stayed at the Owl Bar in San Antonio; an individual made up a time capsule and buried it in the desert well north of town; it would have been an individual due to the extreme security surrounding the test; that individual left a map and his descendants recovered the capsule.
That’s the most interesting thing I don’t have.
I own an original print map by James Cook’s cartographer Rigobert Bonne, from their visit to Kerguelen (only the third ship of humans to do so) in 1776. This is a VERY isolated island in the far southern Indian Ocean (the closest continent is Antarctica).
It’s fascinating because one side of the island is drawn in beautiful, intense detail — bays, capes, shaded relief for the hills — while the other side of the island is just a single, tenuous, incomplete line — and no interior detail whatsoever.
The crew clearly was able to explore and visit just one side.
It’s a beautiful piece of wall art, but also tells a story even with just a casual glance.
Time capsule? I was thinking loot.
I can’t think of much worth looting in San Antonio New Mexico.
I guess another thing. JKellyMap reminded me.
An 1873 map of the state of Colorado. Well 3 years before it became a state. It’s a print, but a very good one considering the age. I printed it off myself. We have it framed and on a wall at home where I can look and study it. It constantly intrigues me.
I found the original, but they want $11,000 for it. Umm… the print is just fine.
I’m in GIS, and in Colorado, so it means a lot to me. I’ve been in mapping since way before computers/GIS.
33-1/3 or 78 rpm?
There were 24 unique tickets printed for the MLB HoF ceremony. They were printed in 4 12" x 18" sheets & then cut 5x to make the 24 unique tix. There is exactly one set of uncut tickets in existence.
While harboring no illusions of T206 Honus Wagner level did try to find the value from a couple of card collector places, as in, should I get a rider on my insurance policy for them. Quite surprisingly, I was told they weren’t worth much. Still kind of shocked by that answer as they’re a lot rarer than cards that I’ve seen go for low double figures.
I have a full sheet of trading cards from Star Trek the Motion Picture.
I’ve seen uncut sheets of card sets, like this:
But I have the full sheet, which is 5x of the sets, like this:
(Note that this is a different card set).
I’ve never seen another one like it.
Oops! I meant 78 RPM and completely blanked. My bad.
It actually has some replacement needles as well.
I have a fake severed arm signed by Chuck Palahniuk and Alice Cooper.
I got the arm during one of Chuck’s book tours. He tossed several severed arms and legs into the audience, and I snagged one and asked him to sign it.
Then, later when I attended an Alice Cooper concert and did the VIP backstage thing, I asked him to sign it too. It was fun trying to get it into the venue, but he was amused.
I’m hoping some day to get Stephen King to sign it too, but that’s not likely to happen.
I have the court order approving and finalizing my father’s adoption in July of 1925. His mother died of TB a few months after he was born and his father had his hands full with 4 or 5 other young children. My father was a sickly baby and if he hadn’t been adopted by his aunt and uncle, he probably wouldn’t have survived and I wouldn’t exist.
A cast from the death mask of an African Montain Gorilla “collected” by Carl Akeley, in the early 1920’s. This Gorilla and others were the centerpiece what later became know as -The Akeley Hall of African Mammals of the American Museum of Natural History in NY. There is a photo of him holding a cast in an issue of the National Geographic Magazine from that period. As I understand it, there were numerous casts made, but I feel blessed to be the owner of one. After killing one of these gorillas he called “the Old Man of the Forest” he swore he would never do that again. It looked at him as if to ask “why did you do that?”, and the human aspect of that face changed him. He spent the remainder of his life working to protect these animals and the Virunga Mountains that were their home.
Sorry, it appears I have not been on here long enough to get permission to upload photos. Would have loved to show it off. He’s a handsome devil…
Upload the photo to imgur and post a link.
This site does not host images.
A big scrapbook from the 1950s full of James Dean ephemera (magazine covers, movie cards, newspaper articles etc) that I bought at a antique store in Tehachapi, CA for $20. I’m not even a particularly a big fan of his, but in the moment I felt it was a treasure trove of show biz/Hollywood history and I had to have it.
300 trillion dollars in cash. Now I just have to fly to Zimbabwe where I can comfortably afford to live the life of a homeless person.
To rip off Stephen Wright “I own the largest collection of sea shells in the world. I keep it on all the beaches. Perhaps you’ve seen it.”
On a more serious note, Mom bought me an odd little bronze statue decades ago at a garage sale in Virginia. Years later, she took me to a traveling exhibit on the Olmec. The bronze statue is either an authentic Olmec ceremonial dagger hilt or a fine replica. I don’t know which. I’m not really sure how to find out.