Old, Valued Things that nobody really cares about anymore

Grandma's china set... The old pump organ... Mother's mink stole... the steamer chest brought over from the old country

Do you have things you feel like you need to hold onto for reasons that aren't even sentimental anymore? I remember this steamer trunk we seemed to drag around for years, eventually acting as a TV stand. Everyone thought they were worth money but they're actually not worth shit. A lot of 'antique' stuff is just not wanted anymore, especially big heavy oak wardrobes and the like

List the treasured family heirlooms that are just dead weight to you at this point.. bonus for pictures

Went through this with both my mom and my grandmother (her mom). My sister tried to sell some things online, just gave up after a while. My grandmother used to collect those tiny spoons; they're on my kitchen wall now. I'll be leaving a warehouseful of dead weight when I check out, but--like many ILX'ers, I assume--in the form of physical media, not what the thread's about. In the furniture/heirloom/antiques department, I won't be much of a burden.

one thing that kinda troubles me is my late dad's college yearbooks: Humboldt State University, circa late 50's-early 60's. Apparently when Raymond Carver attended... they're probably worth something to somebody, but not me. I have them in a trunk, and I won't toss them out, but I'd like to find a reseller to get them into somebody's hands who would actually value them

Having once tried unsuccessfully to acquire some yearbooks from my own high school days--about 15 years after the fact, with an ad in a local paper--I think there is a demand for that if you figure out how best to reach people (especially if someone famous is in there).

My grandmother's spoons--I think they're very cool.

https://i.postimg.cc/26rv24yh/spoons.jpg

aww, those are cute.. and barely take up any space at all. I would hold on to the them unless you're sick of 'em

They'll be with me till someone else has to figure out what to do with them.

so weird that people used to collect shit like that just for collecting.. I guess people still do. I have a friend that collect giant japanese robot toys and then won't let anyone play with them

My grandfather’s duck shotgun. It’s not even worth anything, really.

Family stuff in general. I’m not having kids and I have no nieces or nephews so it’s going to a landfill when I keel over. I don’t get anything from the stuff but I’d feel guilty if I got rid of it.

Want myself and everything I own to become dust

Irrational as it might be, I want the opposite. No kids, but I want traces of me to live on--in stuff I've written, Zooms I've posted on YouTube, maybe my records and baseball books (ideally kept intact...no idea how that happens), something. Even though I'll be dead and will never know.

…and to VG, clemenza bequeaths his (checks notes) “Zooms he posted on youtube”

Sad, I know--my legacy resides inside a website that gave the world funny cat videos.

<3

i've now cleaned out the houses of two parents, both of whom were hoarders.

it's awkward to come to terms with, but none of that shit is worth anything and no one wants it.

i value knowing clemenza, even if i occasionally disagree with him about certain baseball stats/xgau. imo being a friend is incredibly worthwhile even if it doesn't necessarily 'leave traces' of one's passing

I do appreciate that, and this is something I grapple with constantly (good thread for thinking about this stuff): too much time not living in the moment, worrying about what I leave behind, including all the Old, Valued Things That No One Wants and Nobody Really Cares About Anymore. My sister lives entirely in the moment. I remember I was changing classrooms once, putting one thing and one folder after another to the side--"I might use that one day"--while one of my teaching partners was forcibly taking stuff from my hands and, with much laughter, tossing it into the garbage.

feeb liberal political parties

AtG, that's a good point; shit like funkopops, gundam models and warhammer figures are going to be the porcelain puppies, commemorative plates and souvineer spoons of 2075...

The charity shops of the late 21st century are going to be desolate. Although having said that, some charity shops are like that right now. A few years ago in a charity shop I saw a signed framed photo of Ant & Dec (UK TV presenters). Was that someone's valued thing at one point?

Ok a signed Ant & Dec poster would be a decent joke gift I reckon.

Useful things only need a fraction of a lifespan to get obsolete, so in absence of valuables and with the uncertainty of fashion revivals, trinkets act as funny testimonials. Anything you have lived with holds some value. Maybe it reminded them of people they met, things they dreamt of, places they couldn't travel to.

I say that, but I also hate junk.

ILX

Turned 50 last year and still getting the hang of it - but one of my firm preliminary conclusions was “get rid of all this STUFF man”

Definitely hoarding tendencies in my family and I don’t wanna saddle my kids with a mountain of old crap - I actually feel really fortunate to live in the era of eBay and FB Marketplace* just because it makes getting rid of stuff so viable.

*obviously also evil but if you wanna sell stuff fast it is the only game in (my) town

I've only got a couple of family things to remember my late parents by. The most treasured, for sentimental reasons, one is a painting that my mum bought at a school art fair in Africa. I keep it because I remember us going into the building, her looking at paintings and choosing and buying this one. Over 50 years ago!

https://i.imgur.com/tCBw8Yh.jpeg

Re the yearbooks — genealogy people want those things ime … idk try the Mormon church lol … my late uncle ended up after a few decades in journalism as an antiquarian book dealer specializing in stuff like that and many of his clients were mormon. Granted your dad and his former classmates would risk being post-mortem mormonized… idk.

I am having these conversations with my mom — the stuff conversations— how she actually is not a hoarder, she’s just a normal person born in the 40s who has a normal amount of clutter and bulky furniture.

My additions to the list: firewire cables, cookbooks (mom hasn’t brought up the cookbooks yet though the oak dresser, grandma’s rocking chair, and the wedding china have been discussed).

I worked at a history museum in San Jose for a while. The most common donation inquiries were asking if we wanted pianos or sewing machines. We had too many of both and wanted no more.

This 2017 article from The Takeout on exactly this subject has always stuck with me.

I bought a small, fancy Wedgwood dinner service a few years ago, which I use at Christmas or on other special occasions. I'm sure someone has the other half of what was probably originally a massive twelve-person set.

I like the suggestions of just using the china, even if the patterns wear off in the dishwasher. I have some antique epns soup spoons that are not rated for the dishwasher, but I put them in there anyway and they seem fine. Or just keeping one and getting rid of the rest.

I have a bunch of old RAM sticks, and even a couple of mid-2000s CPUs that were left over after upgrading a couple of laptops. I came close to having enough spare components to build an entirely separate computer at one point. But getting hold of a period-correct Pentium M motherboard is hard, and even if I had the components, what then? And yet perhaps one day I might find an AOpen XC Cube case lying by the roadside.

I also have a Power Macintosh G5, which is too awesome to throw away, too heavy to move around, too old-fashioned and power-hungry to actually use. It's essentially an object d'art. It was state-of-the-art in 2003. 64-bit. Two entirely separate processors. Twin hard drive bays. Nine fans. Aluminium case.

I remember reading posts on Photo.net in the 2000s. I remember one user boasting about his film storage cabinet. It was air conditioned and had separate shelves for all of his negatives. Light-sealed to stop the pigments from degrading. From what I remember his photos were uninteresting snapshots of municipal buildings in Wyoming or whatever. He was convinced that his kids were going to look after it all when he was dead and gone. I sometimes wonder how long his kids kept it going until they threw it all out.

The article is weird to me because I have never really been into rituals like that … my family had/has some, but I don’t think I have ever found reassurance or pleasure in them. … especially around stuff like dishes or other “presentation” aspects of food. It’s not that I am unsentimental either … I have and still use my mom’s 30+ year old mikita drill with her name engraved on it.

Selling off a late acquaintance's vast record collection a few years ago led me to the belief that a 'collection' is a very personal thing, and any meaning it has as a totality is inextricably linked to the person that owned it. Once they're gone it reverts to a pile of individual (and probably mass-produced) items that can be safely broken down into its constituent parts and kept/disposed of as desired. This would go for family heirlooms etc too of course.

In other words: keep the photos and allow yourself a few (small!) items, give the rest a little mental funeral and get shot of it. Otherwise it'll bog you down until the day you, yourself, die. This goes for your own pointless shit you're hanging onto for reasons unknown too.

Pertinently, I rarely practice what I preach with all this.

My mom is the queen of having her grandmother's glass serving bowl and her great-grandmother's needlepoint chair that was brought from England as part of a set, and my literal handmade baby dresses (which I just gave to someone who's having a girl type baby soon) and all of that stuff. They're totems for her. When she touches them she sees her grandmother's hands, her mother's kitchen, my infant self. Because I love her so much, I'm floored by the religious observance of it. It's almost like a spiritual practice for her, holding us all in her memory to be called up by these imbued objects.

Idk. It's not for me but I also haven't lost my mother yet. Ask me again when I can't touch her anymore and I just have a bowl and a lifetime of love with nowhere to go.

it's always best to start early on dumping stuff (everyone on the board is old now and if our parents aren't gone they're closer to the end of their journeys than not...) and by doing so you create life WITHOUT those things, so you don't miss them in the end because time marches on. i thought my grandmother had 'stuff' but not 'STUFF' - imagine my surprise when we were clearing out her house and all the drawers exploded like cans of snakes.

I have an acquaintance that runs estate sales locally, and I used to check them out when I was still in acquisition mode.. a lot of retired Berkeley professors' homes, that kind of thing... often beautiful mid-century houses. It's strange to see what's left after the family has taken the things that they want. And if does feel kinda creepy wandering through the emptying house, picking over things like seagulls on a beached whale.

The sales would usually start on Fridays at full price, and that's when the pros would come in, the resellers looking for certain valuable things (jade was really big for some reason). And then saturday would be 1/3 off, sundays 1/2 off.

I went to one that was clearly a friend or associate of Alice Waters, they had signed ephemera from the opening day of Chez Panisse.. lots of cool kitchen stuff. Just an entire lifetime of stuff and a bunch of strangers picking through it. Now I have their italian glass locking jar that I use for tea bags, it was full of ancient bay leaves when I bought it.

Otherwise it'll bog you down until the day you, yourself, die. This goes for your own pointless shit you're hanging onto for reasons unknown too.

see: Swedish Death Cleaning

I'm very much on the side of minimizing possessions to those that have a real place in your life-as-you-currently-live-it. Unfortunately I married someone who, while not a hoarder, has stronger attachments to outdated stuff. She inclines to the both the I-might-need-it-someday school and the sentimental-value school when it comes to keeping stuff. We've come to a modest accommodation around this, but when we move out of our current house into some assisted living apartment setup there'll still be a ton of shit to toss.

see: Swedish Death Cleaning

Yeah I'm not a minimalist, I like having things around that make me happy and make my life feel aesthetically good, but I think the experience of having to unload the previous generation's STUFF is also a particular historical moment. Our last few past generations lived under conditions where it was possible (even socially advisable) to accumulate all that stuff as evidence of a "good" life. Why did my grandma collect decorative tea cups???? Idk but her mom survived the Depression and couldn't throw away a piece of string so everyone is dealing with some shit here.

yeah, there's definitely some inherited trauma around the Great Depression! I had some uncles that could not throw out a length of bailing wire, it went into a cupboard with the other lengths of bailing wire

I don’t think it’s the Great Depression it’s just been generations of an over abundance of objects…like, why would I want my family dishes when I could get dishes at goodwill or target or … Temu. These things are so cheap in relation to income they don’t have the value they once had …

I've been paring stuff down for over a decade, since I mentioned to my daughter and son that I had the big oak dining table and chairs (from 1910! With the original shipping label still attached!) in storage for whichever of them wanted it. Neither did, and though they were kind about it I understood there was nothing of my stuff they wanted to deal with. The table went to lxy and jergins, put to use for art space.

I've been unsuccessful getting Mr. Jaq to stop bringing home physical media. No one will value the books, vinyl, CDs, DVDs, etc enough to want them for what he believes they are worth; no one is going to individually sell them on eBay or whatever after he's gone; no one is likely to read or listen to or watch these things. Maybe a few people will want one of these things as a token of remembrance. But none go out and more come in every year.

Maybe I'm wrong and things will be different - society will collapse enough that all of this will represent wealth and status and hoards of treasure. But I feel the "seagulls on a beached whale corpse" will be much more probable.

I've quoted this before (so had easy access to the exact quote), from The Worst Person in the World--seems especially pertinent to this thread:

"The world that I knew...has disappeared. For me it was all about going to stores. Record stores. I'd take the tram to Voices in Grünerløkka. Leaf through used comics at Pretty Price. I can close my eyes and see the aisles at Video Nova in Majorstua. I grew up in a time when culture was passed along through objects. They were interesting because we could live among them. We could pick them up. Hold them in our hands. Compare them...I spent my life doing that. Collecting all that stuff, comics, books, and I just continued, even when it stopped giving me the powerful emotions I felt in my early 20s. I continued anyway. And now it's all I have left. Knowledge and memories of stupid, futile things nobody cares about."

Almost the exact thread title.

My maternal grandmother was too young for the Depression but I think wartime and postwar rationing definitely affected her outlook on valuing stuff. But yeah, globalisation making shit cheap is probably the bigger factor.

Definitely. There's a way in which the older stuff is "nicer" -- handmade, almost certainly better quality, has lasted all this time whereas today's particle board and plastic shit will only be useful for a year or two and will pollute the planet in its disposal. That's the kind of stuff my family has that I'll probably have to deal with (or someone else already has slowly pared down). I don't have the physical media problem so much except for some books.

Although speaking of books I talked to someone recently who thinks we urgently need to preserve and protect books right now because access to knowledge will be increasingly restricted. Hard to argue with tbh.

here's a sad story of an old man who lived across the street from me and was hit & killed by a car (in a crosswalk), his little dog was also killed.. maybe about a year ago
Anyway, they put a dumpster on the sidewalk below the window and just tossed everything in his apartment into that dumpster. A lifetime of acquisitions (his wife shortly preceded him in death I believe)... no estate sale, just right into the dump. I was almost tempted to see what was in the dumpster but it was all a little too sad

Haha my mom said "When I go please don't let everyone paw over my stuff at a yard sale" and my sister and I looked at each other and were like "............................" lol

I have my grandfather's black tailcoat jacket. It's made from EXTREMELY heavy wool. Amazingly it has no moth holes that I can discover. He probably only ever wore it a couple of times. To some big fancy event, obviously, but what? Surely it must have been pre-war. Now there is a fashion that is never, ever coming back. It is one of these things that at one time was worth quite a bit - not just sentimentally, but just as a very desirable, high-end object, and is now worthless.

Big heavy wardrobes still worth quite a bit in Europe, where built-in closets are still a novelty!

That fabric is still something unique that probably can't be made any more for *~*reasons*!* and could be repurposed!

Ha--just turned up on my FB wall, some group called "American Memory Lane." Makes me wonder again if their algorithms are reaching into my activity on threads like this.

https://i.postimg.cc/7ZWKg20M/past.jpg

(I guess there's other activity from me that suggests I might be interested in such a group, horrendous name aside.)

Wouldn't real stats-heads just buy a little paperback book with a bunch of fine-print data? Those existed, right?

They existed but cards were just more fun (and tended to have more up-to-date info than a book that would lag behind by a year or two most likely). In an era where you had no online video or stat lookup sites, the immediate utility of a card with a player photo and current stats on it was apparent. Now it's vestigial and secondary to the card-as-collector-item.

like as a kid in the 80s if you wanted to know who was on your team that year, you could consult the box scores in the newspaper, buy a program at the stadium, or get a team card in a pack - we definitely tried to collect every player on our team each year (also an era where players didn't bounce around from team to team nearly as much)

the cards had chewing gum as well, which was the actual product... the cards were a coercive to purchase

hee-haw was not a good representation of Owens' talents

I watched it as well and it was only MUCH later in life that I learned that Owens and Roy Clark had this whole other life beyond that corn pone show. It was really anachronistic - it started during the height of womens lib/anti-war/heavy rock/back to the land counterculture, and quaintly looked back to the Opry and stuff like that

Same thing when I learned that Dionne Warwick had done a couple things before Solid Gold ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the Hee-Haw commentary reminded me of a hospital room for a brief while last year— my roommate, an older man, was watching reruns of The Waltons, a show I had never seen, and which I doubt anyone younger than me knows anything about

I guess this show is about to make a comeback on Netflix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2khlhrI83U

Hee Haw: I was probably the last generation to grow up singing “WHERE OH WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT
WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME HERE ALL ALONE
I SEARCHED THE WORLD OVER AND THOUGHT I FOUND TRUE LOVE
YOU MET ANOTHER AND (blow massive spit-spraying rasberry) YOU WERE GONE”

ha I remember that tune

or Junior selling a car, license plate BR-549

I’m going through job interviews and all the managers interviewing me are significantly younger and this thread title bums me out, mods can we change it to “old useful things that will find a satisfying purpose.” Thanks!

Hi Cow Art I am doing the same thing, it fucking sucks

I was gong to say I'm surprised no one answered this thread with "me"

I considered posting "the US Constitution (not the USS Constitution)" but decided against it.

when AI takes away my livelihood, I intend to dress up as a Miner '49er (with a pick axe and gold pan, and a bedroll) and sing 'Oh Susannah!' for San Francisco tourists.. but they won't be carrying cash anymore

That's something I'm painfully aware of now - homeless people must really suffer because no one has cash to hand out anymore.

@ f.hazel - that makes sense!

x-post In DC I've seen panhandlers with signs for their Venmo or other such accounts.

Big Issue sellers (who are all unhoused) in London have card readers.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago

Remembered it from my Wordsworth collector card

here's a sad story of an old man who lived across the street from me and was hit & killed by a car (in a crosswalk), his little dog was also killed.. maybe about a year ago
Anyway, they put a dumpster on the sidewalk below the window and just tossed everything in his apartment into that dumpster. A lifetime of acquisitions (his wife shortly preceded him in death I believe)... no estate sale, just right into the dump. I was almost tempted to see what was in the dumpster but it was all a little too sad

― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, April 18, 2025 1:51 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is rough. who is 'they'? his family or like the management company? & how far down was the drop from window to dumpster?

and a bag of 40s/50s halfpennies which are worth absolutely nothing. Still nice to have, I guess.

When we were kids we used to use these to play cards with my granny. They could then be exchanged for the stale fizzle sticks she kept in a tin under her bed.

My aunt told me that my granny used to cheat when she played us at switch. Mad old woman.

that sounds like a landlord move, if there had been an executor of his estate they would not have done that

we had a quality street tin of big victorian pennies that we used when playing newmarket with gran.

xpost Square readers are cheap, only about 10 bucks or so.

(ebay prices vary from £1.50 to over 100 depending, apparently, on the hairstyle. or £25 for 100)

(^ victorian pennies)

penny was spoilt victorian
penny was spoilt victorian

I have my mother's collection of Royal Copenhagen xmas plates, late 50s to mid 60s, no idea if valuable. Also my parents' coin collection, most of which has base value for its silver content, probably no collector's value except maybe the Stone Mountain commemorative half dollars from the 1920s. I've been sitting on all that for years because trying to maximize return and not leave too much $$$ on the table sounds like so much work.

who is 'they'? his family or like the management company?

Not really sure... it was a second floor apartment, and they were literally throwing things out the window into the dumpster, just like some hired dudes

I was thinking that Elliot Gould's characters in The Long Goodbye and California Split fit in with some of the recent discussion on old showbiz...he's wandering around in the early '70s with all that stuff floating around his head, talking his own private language that most of the world has already lost interest in: the Seven Dwarfs, Barbara Stanwyck, Dumbo, Claude Rains, etc. (Not completely private--George Segal and the security guy who does movie impressions share it.)

If they remake California Split in 2042, two drunk women will be sitting in a bar trying to name the five Spice Girls:

"Okay, I've got Sporty Spice, Ginger Spice, Scary Spice...Grumpy Spice?"
"There's no Grumpy Spice--that's a different crew."

> quality street tin

Why is it that painted tins feel...valuable and worth keeping around? They're useful, yes, but not to the extent the various awkward and incompatible shapes jammed into shelves and under beds attest. All those spools and cards of thread in all those tins, all those tea boxes filled with coins, a box of Dutch cheese crackers that just fits the checkbooks we barely use.

There's a guy in my work who is the double of Claude Rains but I'm left with the agony of not knowing who to tell about it.

But does he have the mellifluous voice, the urbanity, the savoir faire to complete the resemblance?

Elliot Gould was born just a year before Snow White came out; he and his audience of war babies and Boomers would have grown up saturated in Disney theatrical re-releases, storybooks, songs broadcast on The Wonderful World of Disney, etc. I'd say this is like watching elder millennials talking about The Goonies or Back to the Future - it's not exactly *their* pop culture, but it is the pop culture they grew up stewing in.

oops - he was born the year *after* Snow White came out! Could have been a screaming baby annoying the rest of the audience!

and then you have all the "old-time movies on late-night TV" stuff in When Harry Met Sally... i think the cultural shifts of the 60s undoubtedly moved the Golden Age from the center of culture, but it took much much longer to cease comprising a meaningful bank of references and shared lore.

I remember my grandmother telling me about Jimmy Durante's "Goodnight, Mrs Calabash" line and when I asked who she was, the reply: "Only he knows."

i always associate Claude Raines with the Invisible Man hence I don't know what he looks like; bandages and sunglasses

I would refer you to Casablanca, but that might be too remote for some.

The essence of Claude Raines is on display in several important scenes in Lawrence of Arabia.

also prominent in the verses of Science Fiction Double Feature from Rocky Horror!

that song itself is a paean to an entire universe that was flickering and fading even back when I went to RHPS screenings in high school

loving RHPS and Bowie's Diamond Dogs in the early 90s kinda felt like you'd hitched your wagon to a doomed milieu

Nick At Night was around for a while, doing good work.

There was different kinds of nostalgia happening in the early '70s, yes: Bonnie & Clyde/W.C. Fields-era, Bogart/Mitchum/noir-era, and, most of all, American Graffiti/Richrd Nader/much else '50s-era. I do think those two Gould characters are presented as being a little out of step with most everyone they encounter (like Marlowe played off against the nude space cadets next door in The Long Goodbye).

i always associate Claude Raines with the Invisible Man hence I don't know what he looks like; bandages and sunglasses

"We'll begin with a reign of terror," is still my favourite thing to say when I put on new sunglasses.

The movie Casablanca is set in Morocco, in North Africa.

The plot revolves around an airplane flight and a mysterious woman.

The character of Captain Renault is a morally compromised man who seeks absolution and redemption.

This explains the song that goes I bless Claude Rains down in Africa.

re: those Gould characters: for sure! he, and Altman even moreso, have some solid generational distance on the space cadets in question.

maybe part of their appeal was sort of like a beatnik sensibility --- pretty hep, anti-establishment, charting their own course, but not really "of" the 60s in a youth-culture sense. and in the 70s they could connect with that countercultural sensibility while honestly wearing enough wry detachment to regard the hippie generation with both appreciation and a raised eyebrow. and maybe an attachment to pre-1950s pop culture is one of the things that marks that distance. "Hey Nineteen," and Steely Dan in general, are like the same phenomenon displaced by ten more years.

Not to derail the thread, but the Claude Rains reference in California Split is one of my favourite bits in the movie. It's when Gould is sizing up all the poker players for Segal and comes to the empty chair at the table:

"Who can tell, right? Very tall stack of chips. A little impressive...I dunno, unless it's Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. If you see your chips floating up away from you, you know the game is too tough for us and we’re going and we hit something else, right?"

The Steely Dan conection to this thread is dead-on, making me wonder if there is a term for the timeframe when a reference to the past still has cultural cache, and another for when it totally disappears. I'm thankful that I saw so many pre-1980s films with older people to fill in the gaps on any references of which I was unaware, because if I was to watch them for the first time nowadays, I'd regularly be totally lost. I'm guessng this is why any sitcom made before 1980 feels so much of another galaxy.

(Now I'm imagining a cantankerous Donald Fagen doing the exact opposite of glazing a dying past, like a 2026 post-Becker live performance where after the "..in sixty-seven" line that opens "Hey Nineteen", he adds "That's right, I just said SIIIIIX-SEVEN! SIX-SEVEN!")

I work with a cadre of thirtysomethings and they consider me funny but chiefly as a non-sequitur machine because I make lots of referential jokes but they only catch like 1 in 20 of the references, they love the 80s in the abstract though (I try not to talk about how vicious and cruel it was)