Asklemmy

Not me but my mom. Her great grandmother gave her her "mad money" stash that she'd saved over the years, all in silver dollars. She didn't think much of it, just kept it as a memento.

Turns out it's 300 silver dollars minted between 1900 and 1905; some of them are worth over $1k by themselves.

I picked up a used Bucky O Hare NES cartridge for $8 back around 2000. Had no idea what the game was, but the picture on the cartridge was ridiculous. Now it sells for $150-$200 on eBay. More like $600 if you have the box and manual.

Also have Sparkster for Sega Genesis including the box and manual which sells for around $400.

I have a handful of games like that. They were either bought new when I was a kid in the 90s or I bought them cheap in the 2000s. I might sell them when I'm 80.

I own a Planet Arlia Vegeta Funko Pop. Currently worth approximately $5000 USD.

I've got a game in a pile of about 100 sandwiched in between some penny priced games that is worth $500. I'm not creating a shrine for it. Just putting in with the rest of the group.

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.

I have some rare coin collection that I inherited. When my great uncle passed away he just asked everyone to be fair when they go through his stuff. I told everyone they could go ahead I wasn't too worried about getting anything of his as he didn't really keep much sentimental stuff. My mom put a few things aside in a box that she thought I'd like. When I finally had time to go through everything I noticed a binder that looked rough and weighted a ton. Sifting through it I didn't see much reason to keep it but to be safe I decided I'd go talk with my neighbor who owns a pawn shop and knows more about coins than I do. Come to find out I have 2 VERY limited coins that were nearly perfect for their time. Something about them predating US currency. Total value of all the coins is anywhere between $50k-100k. Selling them takes a life time though.

I own a Zune. Despite owning it for over a decade, it's still worth about what I paid for it.

I have season tickets for the Raiders. I had them in Oakland, and we got 1st priority when they moved to Vegas. I jumped at the opportunity bc I knew by Mark Davis moving the team to a tourist destination that there would be demand from both fan bases at every game. My theory is that the extra demand would allow me to sell most games for profit, and I could go to 1-2 /year fully paid with the profit. So far that's worked swimmingly well. I paid the PSL off in year 1 with the profit, and now make ~$3-5k / year selling tickets.

The PSL ran me about $4500/seat and I got 2 seats. They are selling at $30k apiece rn. It's very tempting to sell them for profit, but I enjoy having the ability to go to a few games and making a bit of profit selling the rest.

Yes, I realize I'm a scalper. Yes, I realize I'm part of the reason our home games have so many away fans. Having said that, I really don't care. Mark Davis made a business decision to move the team out of Oakland where we had die hard fans like myself going every week to instead moving to a tourist trap 10 hours away. In turn, I made a business decision to profit from that move.

The 10th anniversary Sonic the hedgehog crystal cube. Bought it on a whim back then, honestly don't even remember what website I got it on, and when I got it I pretty much just kept it in the closet because I never wanted to put it out because I figured one of my cats would knock the damn thing over.

It was actually only a few months ago that I was talking about it when Sonic the hedgehog came up and I decided to Google it and I found out they only made 500 of the fucker.

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.

I’m not cool like everyone else here who got bargains or things that went up in value but for things that are more expensive than they seem to rational people, I have $6k headphones and up to $9k pens. Got them for a little under msrp (for the headphones, the cost of the pens went up).

Rational people don’t generally expect the prices of things like that to get so high, but they actually get a lot higher, I’m also not cool like the people who have those. There’s likely other things like this I can’t think of rn, but pens and headphones easily get the biggest “what’s wrong with you?” probably because they’re handheld non-jewelry

I have a Lego ninjago mask that's worth like $80 with both parts of it. I didn't know how expensive it was until checking my collection a couple days ago.

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 buy and sell used books. I came across one nondescript worn hardback in a box and for some reason decided to research it. It's worth five figures. Cost about 25c.

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 have some old magic cards. There's a few lotus in there. I don't do much with 'em now but they were fun at the time.

The most valuable thing I own is my pokemon card collection. I was obsessed when I was kid, but unlike everyone, I kept going through Rocket, Gym heroes and challenge, all the way to Neo Destiny and Legendary Collection. Possibly the rarest cards I have are two 1ed foil discovery Tyranitars and one 1ed foil Blaine's Charizard. My cards are very well loved and things have calmed down since the pandemic, but it was very weird, especially considering I got a booster box of Neo Discover for 50 bucks in 2009

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.

10 years ago or something I bought a collection album from an artist I liked. I just did it because I like collecting CDs and I liked his music, but it turns out that it was a limited edition and only 1000 were made, each one had a unique number on it. I've seen them go for a few hundred on discogs a few times. I don't intend to sell mine though, it's in a pretty used state because I didn't really realize the value. I'd also rather have it than have a few hundred euro's.

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.

Just recently got what I think is an RCA RS2767IF 300W after looking it up just now. Walmart has it listed out of stock for ~$150. Now, mine isn't anywhere near new condition considering it can't read CDs in the 5 CD changer and has some other cosmetic issues, but for $14.99 at a thrift store, I think I got a great deal. Especially since I can plug my phone into it using aux to RCA Y adapter.