This could be something that you bought for a higher price than what most people would guess based on the item, or it could be something you bought for a normal price that has gained significant value as time has gone on.
What made me think of this question is a LEGO minifigure I got with my “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” disc. It is Bilbo Baggins in a blue coat that was apparently only sold in that movie box only at Target stores. Even considering the exclusivity, I would have guessed maybe $10-20 for such a tiny piece of plastic, but there are sold listings on eBay from $80 to $225. I could possibly even get towards the higher end of that number since I still have everything in the original box in good condition. It’s not worth a ton compared to some other items people may own, but I think most people would not expect nearly that amount.
I had a free book reward from Thriftbooks, which I used for a copy of Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams. When it came, I was kinda bummed that some kid had scribbled on the title page, but eh, it was free. At least it was a first edition in otherwise good condition, I won’t complain.
As I was reading, I got a little itch in the back of my mind, and it of curiosity looked up his signature. Turns out, it looks like some kid’s scribbling
Probably why no one realized.
So I got a signed first edition, which goes for about $200, totally free.
WHAT. That’s crazy! What a story- great find!
A very Douglas Adams sort of occurrence, particularly fitting I thought.
I used to frequent a thrift shop that gave books away for free, I saw a copy of Cloud Atlas and thought it would be a good read (it was). I accidentally for the dust cover a little then looked at the title page, signed first edition. Not worth much, but cool nonetheless.
I discovered that a small strip of dead land at the side of my friends’ brand new house was available to buy for loose change from the original land owner (a once giant estate that had been broken up into parcels at auction) Fast forward three years or so later and the developer started stage two of the house building, another 850 houses. Guess whose tiny parcel of land was needed for utilities and access due to the terrain? We basically picked a number out of the air and the next day the cheque / check arrived. Paid off the mortgage, sold the house and paid about 90% the price of their dream home straight away and had a bit left over too. Can’t help but think that somebody somewhere lost their job/contract over that.
I went to a Hotel Furniture liquidator for some new furniture. Saw a good looking office chair and they only wanted $20 for it.
Brought that bad boy home and only then did I find out that they had sold me a new Herman Miller Aeron for only $20. Completely insane.
I’ve heard those chairs are super nice and super expensive. Great find!
I’ve sat in one. It’s a nice chair, but… well let’s just say office chairs are very subject to diminishing returns. I’d definitely buy one for $20 though.
This one’s 20 years old, and it’s been used heavily. It’s help up really well.
I’m sitting in one now. It’s 20 years old. It’s time for a new one.
BUT. They’re repairable. The local HM dealer can tell you where to send it for an assessment. It’ll not have its warranty back, but for 7,000 days of heavy use, this thing’s doing well. Its back and pan are good, and it’s really just a few stabilizer bits that look like they’re the patented ‘first thing to eventually go’ struts. It could be a $200 repair and it’s back in business. But I’ll have a new one this year because my ass wants to see a new one.
Yeah. New they’re like 900+. Used, early 300+
I got one as a hand-me-down from my father’s office when they replaced all their chairs. It’s pretty well worn and the upholstery is rather frumpy these days, but the bones of the thing are still good.
I remember talking about desk chairs with a friend group and on a lark I thought I’d read off the model on it to demonstrate how unassuming this no-name chair I thought I had was. So I actually said something akin to, “Yeah, it’s just some chair from some company called Herman Miller, whoever that is,” and everyone was aghast. They had to explain to me what Herman Miller actually is, and I was very embarrassed for having accidentally humble bragged about it.
Nice! I just paid $300 for one of these used a month or so ago. Found out it’s a little small for my height so I’m going to have to resale and find the bigger version or just get an expensive office chair and stop trying to be cheap
I own a full size Batmobile model from a canceled game bundle Batman Arkham Knight: Batmobile Edition. It was canceled due to quality control issue and was shipped to select people before getting canceled. So that’s a pretty rare find. All the electronics still works and it can switch normal and battle modes with a remote. Had some people offering multiple thousand bucks for it, and I got it just randomly without knowing it’s rare.
What does full size mean can you get inside it and drive it around
It’s about 30 cm in width. By full size I meant it’s not a hot wheels model
I had a friend over who complimented my teapot, I love it because it’s a nice color, good size and has a stainless steel infuser that fits inside. So I offered to get her one of her own only to find out that this particular color is highly collectible and worth 6-7x what I paid for it originally. Now I have a nice teapot I’m paranoid about anything happening to, haha.
If you never intend to sell it then value doesn’t really matter. It can be a fun story when someone is over for tea, but you aren’t losing anything if something happens.
It does matter if I ever needed to replace it 😬 I know I’d order some other teapot instead but I do love this one and I’d miss it.
What color is the teapot? Do you know if that color had a limited number or if it is just popular? It’s always a little funny to me when something is rare just because of a different color or something similar that doesn’t impact function compared to the normal item, but I get it all comes down to preference and rarity.
It’s by Le Creuset, and they apparently rotate out most of their colors. So you can still buy the same teapot in a different color, which is what I ended up doing for my friend. The one I got was a limited run, it’s a pretty rich purple they called “cassis”, if you search Ebay for anything in that color the prices are nuts!
I have four tyres in pretty good condition on my car, that’s $1000 right there.
One Christmas, my mother-in-law gave me an unopened bottle of whisky they had in their cabinet for a while. It was some of the best whisky I’ve ever had. About halfway through the bottle on Boxing Day, I took a moment to look up the cost (it’s since gone up in price, but you’ll get the idea)
https://dekanta.com/store/suntory-hibiki-30-years-old/
I. Was. Horrified. I have exactly two ounces left, that I will probably consume with my wife on my deathbed.
Bruhhhh
Don’t downvote this guy, ‘bruhhhh’ is right.
Ok but you said “some of”, not “the” best, I wanna know which whiskey you’ve had that’s better than the $12,000 bottle!
Uncle Jethrow’s bathtub special is surprisingly smooth and you don’t even go blind with this batch.
I don’t own them anymore, but vintage Hewlett-Packard calculators, the RPN variety for engineers. An acquaintance moved into hospice a few years ago, and his family cleared out the house. I went over because they offered us sailors pick of his old boat gear, but I poked through the pile of electronics destined for the recycler, too. I grabbed several old calculators, a printer unit, and some programming books for them, as I was vaguely aware that maybe some people collect them. As it turns out, I got almost $700 for them on eBay.
The ones that I do still own are several IBM Model M keyboards that I picked out of the $1 keyboard bin at the university surplus shop back in the day. Although, after using one of them for 17 years (with no signs of wear), I realized that 5 spares would long outlast me, I sold a few for almost $400 total.
Another friend unexpectedly passed away earlier this year. A neighbor is helping to liquidate his vintage computer collection. I stopped by the house and saw a Northgate OmniKey Ultra in a pile, and asked how much would he take for it. Turns out, that was a recycling pile, so he just gave it to me. I could probably get $200 for it after cleaning it up, if I didn’t need it.
Seething with jealousy I am. I love the HP 33s but it’s currently priced more than I’d like. I don’t know if I’d actually use it, not a ton to use it on anymore, but wish I had one nonetheless.
My son has a stuffed animal in his bedroom worth about $5,000
He won a sweepstakes prize while we were collecting squishmallow cards. I built him a plexiglass cube to display it, but if not for the display, it’s a very unassuming stuffed animal.
I have a feeling these are gonna go the way of beanie babies and vinyl toys and be worth very little in 3-5 years.
But then again, I just dug out some of my old Matchbox cars for my 6 year old. Just for fun went looking on eBay, and if I had treated them better, a couple were worth over $300. So who knows.
That’s fine, I don’t think he’ll ever sell it. It means more to him than a pay day.
That’s awesome! I agree that it doesn’t look all too special if it was just sitting with other stuffed animals.
The single most expensive item I own is a gold coin from Imperial Rome, an Aureus of emperor Antoninus Pius. I bought it about three years ago when I was just starting to collect ancient coins. I came across this particular coin on a “regular” gold & silver bullion site in my neck of the woods, for 3K. Not knowing too much about it, I bit the bullet (which is actually an incredibly stupid thing to do, akin to gambling). Turns out it’s very real, mint state, and worth about 2K over what I paid for it right now. I have since continued collecting ancients, especially Romans, and by now know the entire history of Rome and all its emperors in detail. Which again underscores how incredibly stupid it was to buy something so expensive without decent prior research. I was just incredibly lucky that an actual reputed bullion dealer apparantly had come across this coin and got rid of it far under what it was worth.
I don’t expect to be able to repeat this feat, but I’m definitely on the lookout…
I have an old folder of pokemon cards from my childhood. Apparently, that folder is worth thousands. I have first editions of a lot of the first cards and they are all in near mint condition. Im not selling, as they have sentimental value + my local shops would probably rip me off.
I wish I had kept my cards. I had binders and lunch tins full of Pokemon cards when I was younger. A lot got sold at garage sales while I was growing up, but I may still have a few left somewhere.
If you ever do sell them, I’d recommend only selling to a shop as a last resort or if you need quick money. I usually start by trying to sell on Facebook Marketplace since you don’t have to pay fees or shipping and get the most profit. On the flip side, you usually need to wait longer due to the smaller number of local buyers, and you have to deal with annoyances like people haggling for obscenely low prices, asking you to drive far to meet them, or just not showing up to buy the item. After a while, I usually list the item on eBay which means less profit due to fees and shipping, but usually more buyers and a smoother experience.
Oh, I always win at Book Off in Japan. If you don’t know what that is, give it a search. It’s an interesting place.
I’ve bought several expensive camera lenses for 8-20$. Since they have no electronic components, they work fine. I use them to document work I do for various people or myself as a marketing too for my business. Worth every last one of those 8 dollars! Some are worth quite a bit of money.
There’s a vacuum tube on my desk worth a bit. I found it for 3$ in a junk bin. Turned out it worked, so I built a weird, cursed amplifier out of it as a joke, using some old Soviet scrap and mystery Chinese ICs. Probably not worth anything anymore! – but hey, it’s a tube amp that works entirely at 5V! So weird!
I have a beautiful set of unused old ink stones from a famous manufacturer in China. I paid around 10$ for it. These are actually quite expensive and worth hundreds of dollars. Certainly less than a thousand though.
I also have a singing bowl, made of cast bronze. I don’t know much about it, except it’s old enough to predate modern machining (it was clearly sand-cast). It’s probably also cursed – someone sold it to me by accident for a few dollars when I asked for something else. Then I didn’t notice until I got home. It’s probably worth some money to the right person, but few people value such old things in my country and I don’t want to sell it to an overseas buyer.
Oh and I have one of the original victory fliers from when the Japanese defeated the Russians in 1904. In perfect condition. I have no idea what it’s worth, but certainly much more than I paid for it, haha. I should probably find a museum for it one day.
A spectrophotometer - the sort used for display calibration and color sample matching. I paid about $180, which was extremely low; the current version from the same company is ten times that new. Colorimeters, which look similar and can also be used for display calibration cost far less.
I mainly use it for flashlight reviews.
What is the model of spectrophotometer that you bought?
X-Rite i1Pro.
Geese. We got them to cut down on the number of chickens that hawks were taking. They live exclusively on grass so they cost nothing to maintain. We haven’t lost a single hen to hawks in the three years since we got them.
So that’s all about saving money. Where is the profit? Goose eggs. In the spring they lay eggs that are 5.5 to 7.5 ounces each. Chicken eggs are only 30% yolk. But goose eggs are 50% yolk. A single egg has a yolk almost 3x the size of three chicken eggs. These are worth money as food at $7 each or as hatching eggs for barter with other homesteaders that want geese and have incubators.
Edit: forgot to add that they are the best lawnmowers ever. They have dramatically cut down how much we need to mow. Which saves fuel and W&T on the mower as well as time.
I own a Zune. Despite owning it for over a decade, it’s still worth about what I paid for it.
