What is the rarest thing you own?

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brianmanahan

Lifer
Sep 2, 2006
24,625
6,011
136
I have a coin collection with some fairly rare ones. Unfortunately, they are only in fair to good condition, so the value is not that great.

nice, modern or ancient?

i have an ancient that is pretty rare, an aksumite silver coin (ancient ethiopian) from ~500AD of which there are only a few hundred known to exist. a few others i have were more expensive like the ~650BC lydian coin, but not as rare.
 
Aug 11, 2008
10,451
642
126
nice, modern or ancient?

i have an ancient that is pretty rare, an aksumite silver coin (ancient ethiopian) from ~500AD of which there are only a few hundred known to exist. a few others i have were more expensive like the ~650BC lydian coin, but not as rare.

Modern. I have indian head pennies, lincoln pennies and mercury dimes. The most valuable are probably the 1931s Lincoln penny and all 3 1931 mercury dimes. Unfortunately, most are in only fair to good condition. My next door neighbor when I was growing up in the sixties was a coin dealer, and we bought a few relatively rare coins from him. My dad worked in a park that had vending machines that used pennies for cups and silver for soda, so I got the pennies and dimes from there. Unfortunately, we did not have enough money to buy the rarest coins, like the 1909s vdb penny. We could have gotten that coin for a few dollars back then, and now it is worth several hundred, even in fair condition.

Nothing close the the coin that you have though. That is awesome.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,563
13,802
126
www.anyf.ca
Curious. That says "New Ulm (Neu-Ulm is a city) Customs Office. Overseas Luggage Service Main Station."

But Bahnstation Bremen (Train station Bremen) is quite far north in Germany, and Neu-Ulm is in Bavaria in the south. Perhaps it left Neu-Ulm to Bremen, and then to Canada? Both cities are old enough to be pre-WWI even. I doubt it's worth anything at all, but a neat piece of history none the less. Any other German language written on the container? Anything inside?


Not much else, there are some stickers but they are too worn to really make out anything. Sadly the previous home owners are both deceased as well and I never really got any contact with them as I bought through a realtor. It's one of those things I figured I'd hold on to though as it is a neat relic from the past.

Was also empty when I opened it the first time, though I was a bit afraid of what I'd find because it was in a super creepy crawlspace lol. I've never seen spiders that big before.
 

killster1

Banned
Mar 15, 2007
6,205
475
126
I have a few comic book boxes from the late 80's/early 90's. I'm sure there are some rare ones in there somewhere.


My life.. seems like you have endless time for pointless posts :) :) :) :)

Ummm what else, extensive collections of error baseball cards, error coins. feel like the errors are more rare, not sure but they where worth ALOT when acquired heh.
 

Platypus

Lifer
Apr 26, 2001
31,046
321
136
Not much else, there are some stickers but they are too worn to really make out anything. Sadly the previous home owners are both deceased as well and I never really got any contact with them as I bought through a realtor. It's one of those things I figured I'd hold on to though as it is a neat relic from the past.

Was also empty when I opened it the first time, though I was a bit afraid of what I'd find because it was in a super creepy crawlspace lol. I've never seen spiders that big before.

Schade.
 

madoka

Diamond Member
Jun 22, 2004
4,344
712
121
Ummm what else, extensive collections of error baseball cards, error coins. feel like the errors are more rare, not sure but they where worth ALOT when acquired heh.

The only error card worth having:

573533af74a0b.jpeg
 

Naer

Diamond Member
Nov 28, 2013
3,474
181
106
prob my steel tongue drum'

QuWEsbq.jpg


It's a lot harder to make, and is a little more expensive than other musical instruments, so that makes it rare
 

FeuerFrei

Diamond Member
Mar 30, 2005
9,144
929
126
Not sure.
I think this one publication from 1940 or so might be rare. No date on it, but it's a compilation of a bunch of articles on the Gestapo. The point appears to be to fill Americans in on the history and tactics of the organization. Looks like a professional publication, yet pages often consist of photocopied cutouts arranged to fit the page.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
100,225
17,894
126
Curious. That says "New Ulm (Neu-Ulm is a city) Customs Office. Overseas Luggage Service Main Station."

But Bahnstation Bremen (Train station Bremen) is quite far north in Germany, and Neu-Ulm is in Bavaria in the south. Perhaps it left Neu-Ulm to Bremen, and then to Canada? Both cities are old enough to be pre-WWI even. I doubt it's worth anything at all, but a neat piece of history none the less. Any other German language written on the container? Anything inside?


That was how squirrels were introduced to Timmins.

I think the rarest thing I have is a 1964 Tokyo Olympics patch. I don't think it is all that rare though.
 

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
1,235
136
Not sure.
I think this one publication from 1940 or so might be rare. No date on it, but it's a compilation of a bunch of articles on the Gestapo. The point appears to be to fill Americans in on the history and tactics of the organization. Looks like a professional publication, yet pages often consist of photocopied cutouts arranged to fit the page.
It was a time before digital desktop publishing.
 

repoman0

Diamond Member
Jun 17, 2010
5,191
4,572
136
I own something pretty fucking cool.

It's a page of musical notes that were very likely written by Mozart himself. It was acquired somehow (nobody knows for sure exactly how) by one of my relatives in Europe sometime in the late 1800's.

It hasn't been "officially" verified but several musical scholars that my family had look at it over the years have stated it is almost 100% certainly Mozart's writing.

I have no idea what it's worth. I would never part with it.

What piece of music? Is it published elsewhere?

As for me ... probably the car. One of about 3000 and I've had serious offers of close to double what I paid about 3.5 years ago. Also I used to collect coins as a kid, primarily the 1916-1948 liberty half dollars, and apparently some of those are pretty rare as well but not worth a whole lot. I used to be amazed at how old they are, and now I live in a house older than all of them (1915)
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,857
31,346
146
I have a few comic book boxes from the late 80's/early 90's. I'm sure there are some rare ones in there somewhere.

lol, no. Probably the worst value of any era of comic books. The "collectible" issues would often go to 5 or more printings, and the first printing, perhaps quite valuable at the time, is literally worth nothing these days. Everything was a huge collectible at the time, meaning even those first printings were flooded all over the place.

It's like looking at your baseball cards from the same era and thinking they are worth anything.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,857
31,346
146
Curious. That says "New Ulm (Neu-Ulm is a city) Customs Office. Overseas Luggage Service Main Station."

But Bahnstation Bremen (Train station Bremen) is quite far north in Germany, and Neu-Ulm is in Bavaria in the south. Perhaps it left Neu-Ulm to Bremen, and then to Canada? Both cities are old enough to be pre-WWI even. I doubt it's worth anything at all, but a neat piece of history none the less. Any other German language written on the container? Anything inside?

Dude doesn't even know that he's had a crate of Nazi gold in his possession all these years.
 

DietDrThunder

Platinum Member
Apr 6, 2001
2,262
326
126
I could you those, wanna trade that for 5 bars of gold-pressed latinum? ;)
Your choice and we'll have a deal:
  • Ten bars of gold-pressed latinum
  • or five thousand wrappages of Cardassian yamok sauce
  • or seven tessipates of land on Bajor.
:D
 

herm0016

Diamond Member
Feb 26, 2005
8,516
1,128
126
i have a telescope mount built by George Carroll for mounting a solar spar that measured the output of the sun to estimate the radiation dosage of Apollo era astronauts. also, we have some original paintings, 1930's fortune mag. covers, a handful of roman coins picked up during WW1.
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,353
1,862
126
I usually cook my steaks medium rare, but, one of my friends has a wife that likes her meat blue, so, I literally slapped it on the skillet for 20 seconds on each side just to sizzle it a little bit. It's the rarest thing I've ever seen anybody eat.
 

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
1,235
136
Certainly. But real magazines back then like Reader's Digest didn't resort to photocopying. Seems crude.
Well they would have had to do something like photographing photographs. They just did a better job of hiding it.

Even magazines in the mid '90s were still doing manual layouts with transparent overlays and stuff.

I can't find the link, but I recall someone trying to sell a pack of transparent sheets with Donkey Kong Country artwork that was meant for magazines to use with their write-ups on the game.

[edit]
Yeah. That's the third time DKC has been mentioned in this thread. I wish I owned the competition cartridge. It's worth well over $3,000 now.