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.
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 $7 each or as hatching eggs for barter with other homesteaders that want geese and have incubators.
Edit: forgot to add that they are the best lawnmowers ever. They have dramatically cut down how much we need to mow. Which saves fuel and W&T on the mower as well as time.
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I own a Zune. Despite owning it for over a decade, it’s still worth about what I paid for it.
Oh, I always win at Book Off in Japan. If you don’t know what that is, give it a search. It’s an interesting place.
I’ve bought several expensive camera lenses for 8-20$. 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.
I have a game boy game that was worth over $30 (which was fairly high for a game boy game at the time). AVGN made a video on the game and it shot up in price more than tenfold. Though it may have cooled down since I last checked.
That’s cool. I wish I had kept some of my old Gameboy games, either to play or to sell. A lot of the games I had have jumped in price in recent years.
Especially Pokemon games! And especially if you kept any of the cardboard!
I found a copy of “The Hunt for Red October “ in a bargain bin. It looked funny and had a version of the cover I’d never seen before Bought it for like $5
It was a first printing From the Naval Institute Press.
Worth like 200$.
Nice
I’m actually reading through Hunt for Red October now, but mine is a cheap worn-out copy I got for free with another book purchase at a flea market. That’s awesome to find a first edition!
I built a cube(a curated collection of cards made for drafting) of all the worst Magic cards ever made.
Most of the cards are worth around $0.05, however my copy of Urza’s Miter currently goes for $22 because of it’s rarity
That card is such a a potato lol. I’m very amused it’s got a price range that high
That’s an interesting collection of going for the worst cards, but it doesn’t surprise me with some cards being worth more. I collect some coins, and I know some people will pay high sums of money for a coin with a low official grading (the coin is naturally worn down to the point you can barely make out what type of coin it actually is).
Great grandpa was a woodworker, there’s been at least one in every generation, and some how got a hold of a late 1800s or early 1900s Stanley No.1 plane. I think it sells for around 2k to 2500. Its got wear, but it still works just fine.
I rarely use it, but it’s something that’s been in the family for over 100 years. I do a little woodworking, mostly utilitarian stuff like boxes and shelves, but I’ll never sell it. 3 generations of people used it to make a living.
I agree something like that shouldn’t be given up. It’s amazing that it’s made its way to you and still works. While they don’t take up nearly as much space as your plane does, I have a deed, some bank statements, and some letters from relatives that are 100-150 years old. They wouldn’t be worth much to anyone but my family, but it’s great having that history to hold onto.
A number 1 plane is actually tiny. That’s part of why they are expensive. They are small enough that demand was low since most people didn’t want/need them. They only really fit in child hands.
Now they are a collectors item since people want to collect them all, but they never made many.
It’s* got wear
I bought a mosin nagant made in the 30s with a hex receiver for $80 when I was 18. They are getting closer to $1000 now. I should have bought more. The place had a whole crate of them.
A bit of a narrow audience, but I bought The id Anthology - basically a greatest hits collection of id Software’s games up to Quake.
I bought it for a laugh really a few months after it came out for about £25, and kept the cool trinkets inside it.
These days, it’s worth anything from fifteen times that to fifty times that, judging by eBay’s completed listings.
It’s cool, and I’ve no plans to flog it, but it’s nice to know that there’s a small holiday’s worth of funds tied up in it.
That looks awesome! Collector’s boxes of games can be really cool. I still have the collector’s edition of Skyrim (the original release), and it’s worth a good bit. I don’t really want to get rid of the cool Alduin statue though.
My student loans? Child support? Repairs and maintenance?
laughcries in poor
I pay 1000 dollars a month for what amounts to a decrepid dog kennel.
I have a pair of front seats for a car.
Got them in trade on some work, was just so I could replace worn out seats, but when I got them I noticed they were special option seats, only came factory in one car in Japan, and an option in ~7 various cars/years in Japan. They’re worth ~$3000. For 2, unassuming blue and black seats.
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 four tyres in pretty good condition on my car, that’s $1000 right there.
I have an old book from 1932 called “The Theory of Relativity” by Albert Einstein. It smells ancient and is worth a bit of change last time I checked.
