The oldest thing you own (that's interesting)

I actually misread Tom’s thread about what you’ve owned the longest and thought it was about the oldest thing you owned. So I had to ninja edit my post. That got me thinking, though; what old, cool shit do we all own?

For me, the oldest thing I own is a flawless 18th century European-cut 1.26k white diamond, now sitting on my fiancee’s finger in the setting she chose for her engagement ring. It’s been passed down through my family for generation upon generation, and all appraisals have valued it as… well, invaluable, in the context of sentimentalism. But it’s actually worth ~$100,000 depending on who appraises it. It was given to me by my mother, who in her dying will left it to me for when I met the girl that was finally the one. I’ve had it for a while, but this is the first time it’s sat on someone’s finger. Pic:

But, on a geekier level I’m also proud of something much younger: An original Macross Focker Special VF-1S Skull Leader Japanese model kit, never opened from the shrinkwrap. Very few were ever produced from the original product line, so it’s a treasure to me. Bought from a garage sale in '02 for $1. It’s older than me, and probably worth an eBay fortune. So, what old-ish things do you own that you treasure (that’re interesting)?

I own a set of encylopedia’s printed in 1897. I found it about 10 years ago, packed away in a shed on my family’s farm which was first homesteaded in the 1860’s. No idea how many decades they’d been forgotten out there.

My best guess is they were already aged when my family got it. My grandfather had a habit of buying stuff at auctions and never getting rid of anything.

I have those encyclopedia’s currently at my parents’ home. I also have a set of 1937 encyclopedias, inherited from my grandmother, which I have here at my apartment. Sooner or later I’ll get ownership of my parents set of 1967 encyclopedias and my Great Aunt has said I can have her set of 1997 encyclopedias.

What can I say, I accumulate obsolete knowledge.

I have a small chunk of rock from Iona that’s two or three billion years old. (It’s not super-rare or anything, the whole island is made out of it)

Um…are you sure about that?

Don’t get me wrong, the fact that you’re reusing the diamond is fantastic and honestly this is a great story. I guess I just don’t understand how a diamond ring that size could be worth quite that much.

My father-in-law has a 400-year-old katana (a relic from his father’s time in service) that he’s hinted might become mine when he passes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hoping he’ll die or anything, but I’d love to have that sword. I’ve held it in awe.

Yes, the story is cool and using a heirloom like that is great - but the price seems to be about 10-100 times too high depending on the actual ring itself (not that I’m an expert, but it seems very high).

I have a 600 million year old fossil rock, a bible from 1897 as well as some other books from about that time, some furniture built by my great granddad and some heirloom jewelry going a few generations back- but nothing that has anything but sentimental value.

We have a dinosaur footprint, and a collection of paleolithic Egyptian stone blades.

I have a bible that belonged to my 3x great grandfather. It needs to be rebound by a professional, that the quote I have is about 2000.00, so that won’t be happening any time soon.

The bible is in “high” German, and is written in a very elegant calligraphy. The inside reads “Property of Captain H. E. Baack”, which means I can date it around 1843, when H. E. went back to Hamburg and was pardoned for deserting the Palatinate’s army 5 years prior. He purchased himself a rank in the army, and then came back to the United States with a new set of credentials.

Me. :(

Somewhere around here, I have a bit of petrified wood. No idea how old it is, but it’s potentially quite ancient.

Otherwise, I have a Roman coin that appears to be from the Octavian era.

I have a reel of magnetic tape from sometime in the 60s or 70s that no reader currently exists for (that we can find). I found it in a dumpster. My friends and I are building a reader for it, and we’re totally going to see what’s on it!

I have love letters from my great grandfather to my great grandmother, dating from the 1900’s. They’re very sweet.

I have a couple of medical and biology books from the early 1800s. I call them my books that are wrong about everything.

You read them all the time, I take it.

1932 Cleveland Plain Dealer. The Lindbergh kidnapping figures prominently. I guess that’s why grandma kept it.

Do you keep them next to “My lists that are wrong about everything”?

I have a bunch of old pulps from the 20s-40s that I’ve collected over the years…mostly Weird Tales and Black Mask, but a lot of other random pulp magazines that I’ve picked up cheap.

It’s possible, only one jeweler appraised it that high. The lowest appraisal was $50,000. Reasons for value were no flaws (chips, cracks, etc), it’s as white as they come with no visible pigmentation, cuts were highly symmetrical for a hand-cut diamond, the style of cut, and of course, when it was cut. I’m not an expert either, so I’m just going with what I was told.

My House.
1750.

Snap!