cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/15669474
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.
My education according to my student loans.
Haha, I feel that
In 1977 I bought 2 1964 fender Stratocaster guitars. Both for $750.
A few years later a friend of a friend needed money and sold me both his 1963 fender telecasters.
Each guitar is worth north of $20k today.
Holy shit! How did you afford 21 964 guitars?
Well, like I said above, I got the 2 1964 Stratocasters for $750 in 1977 or so…
You still play any of them? Have a favorite?
Yes I do play them, constantly.
For decades I played the white Stratocaster, because that’s the color Jimi Hendrix played. The blue one pretty much lived in its case for decades because the color was in my opinion, uncool. I brought it out recently and people flipped for it, said the color was very cool so, now I play that too.
The black telecaster is my all time favorite.
That’s awesome. Not too many things we own today can appreciate in monetary value to reflect the personal value we got out of them. Though I suspect the personal value can never really be quantified for you.
That teal one is an awesome color
That’s awesome! The guitars look really nice in your picture. Is there anything special specifically with those guitars that make the value so high, or are they just rare and collectible?
Honestly, I don’t understand it. I mean, they’re great guitars for sure, and they do sound way better than new ones… but, tens of thousands of dollars better? I dunno.
My house. 20 years ago it cost $105K, today I could sell it for almost 3 times that.
Congrats on the increase in investment. I’m starting to look into buying a house in the near future, and some of the price increases are crazy. I saw one house that said it was purchased for something like $180k 5 years ago and was pending now for like $320k
It is crazy. It was only ever just our home to raise our family, but 20vyears later, here we are.
I recently got my 35 year old car appraised and despite me buying it for $3500 13 years ago and putting nearly no work into it in that time, it’s now worth $12000. Unfortunately I love the car and am unlikely to sell it. But about 1/3rd of the times I drive it, some random person will come up to me in a parking lot asking if I would ever consider selling it, so if I do it’ll probably be pretty easy to sell. The car is a mark 3 Toyota supra in white, with a modest tasteful bodykit that seems to have proven to be ahead of it’s time appearance-wise.
I know with what the entire used car market is like now, that’s not as unexpected as most of these other posts, but it was certainly unexpected to me. Someone just told me out of the blue to get it appraised, so it got me curious enough to go through with it.
I have a few servers that I’ve put together, both towers and rack mount, that are fairly old in IT terms but would still sell for thousands used.
I pulled most of the parts out of the trash.
What do you use the servers for, if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve been considering setting something basic up for some additional file storage or local media streaming and am always curious what others use their setups for.
I used to work IT for a while and we had one guy who would pick up all our old hardware from clients. A lot of it was still functioning well, but the clients got new tech and wanted us to just wipe the drives and get rid of it. The guy would sort through it, keep some of the stuff that was functioning either for himself or to sell and would strip the rest for materials.
I have two ones of Anchor Blocks. They’re stone building blocks from Germany that my father bought me back in the early 90s. They’re wonderful to build with.
There’s a new company making them again, but for a decade or so they were out of manufacturing and would sell for $500-1000 a box.
https://anchor-stone.eurosourcellc.com/classic-anchor-blocks.html
They’re very cool to build with. Since they’re actual stone, they stack, stand, and balance in ways that wooden or plastic blocks don’t. It’s very rewarding to build with them.
That’s really cool. I never knew anyone made them as stone blocks. Do they still hold that value, or have they gone down after they started getting produced again?
I don’t know about a collector’s market for original sets these days, but a quick search makes it look like the prices have come down a lot (which is great). The first sets are very reasonable for the quality, but trying to get up to the 32A series boxes is nuts. The buildings you can make with those are absolutely astounding, but well beyond my means.
I have a few 3" tall pieces of vinyl that somehow seem to still be worth $500+ ea.
My wife and I dealt with some grief one summer by buying Pop figures. But we now have a bunch of figures that are still selling for $500 mint in box. Most of them have been opened and displayed, but we’ve got 5 that are MIB and all but one were purchased at the retail ($10). We were in it for the chase, so finding things at retail price was part of it. It was a great distraction.
I hope you and your wife are doing better now! I collected Pops for a while (mostly just characters that I liked) and got a few expensive ones, but nowhere near that price tag.
Thank you.
I own a physical copy of Chrono Trigger, with the box and manual.
Very jealous.
Bought 2 acres of wooded land in North Carolina for $60k, 2 years ago and built a house on one of the 1 acre lots. Now an empty 1 acres lot is going for $100k next door. I guess land really is a great investment if you find a deal.
I have a picture from my parents that’s apparently now worth 3k-ish they got it for donating to a church when I was real young. Though I don’t follow that religion it’s still a neat picture (does not depict anything religious, is actually SciFi)
Scientology?
The picture does not represent anything from Scientology or any other church for that matter.
That’s an interesting way to get something worth so much. Is the painting tied to the religion in any way, or did the church just give out random paintings it happened to own?
Pretty sure it, along with some other items were donated to the Church and the church, having no real way to use such items gave them out to big donors. Other people got like, (also not scientology) vacuums, one big ol office printer worth 5k, and one of those leather couches you’d probably see in a grandparents house.
As far as I’m aware, none of those items (picture included) were related to the religion. I’m not a fan generally of religious stuff but it has nostalgia from when I was a kid and since it’s just a picture and religion only plays into how it was obtained I saw no reason not to accept it
I bought a Roland Jupiter 6 synthesizer for $1100 around 14 years ago. Are the time, the price definitely made me flinch. Last I checked, they are going for $8000-$10,000 on eBay.
I bought a funny drawing for $20 from Goodwill showing toony animals in an 80s office setting. It was extremely dated, down to portraying a mainframe computer with eyes on it, but there’s something about it I find absolutely charming and it has a place of honor above my fireplace.
A few years later, I looked it up on a whim, and it turned out to be a limited-run lithograph called “Bits” by Robert Marble in 1983, and it was worth a hundred bucks then (closer to $250 now). There’s only 750 copies of it ever made, and mine is a relatively low number (122).
There’s no way in hell I’m selling it, but it’s a really neat little story!
Nothing of high, high value either but one time I bought a box full of Yu-Gi-Oh cards at a garage sale. It was just a small christmas box but full of cards, often even in sleeves. The guy who sold it even asked me if he should get rid of them. He didn’t know the box had something in it and thought I just wanted the box itself. I denied and asked for the price. The lowest he could get was 50ct for an item. Since it was a box and cards it was 2 items, so 1€ in total. The most valuable card is around 30€ at the moment, the full box around 100-120€.
That’s quite a deal. I bought some Pokemon cards from garage sales when I was younger and would get a few rare cards every once in a while.
I have a few Gamecube games that people sell up to two hundred dollars. However, I take caution because supply is not demand.
Oh. Maybe I should look up how much mine are worth.
I have a LOT of comic books and it always surprises me when a book comes out of flipping nowhere to become valuable.
Example:
