[Sinister]

What really odd memorabilia or strange paraphernalia do you own? Or what treasures are among your most highly prized?

I have a statuette of a Skeleton with a mohawk holding a surfboard that says "Surf or Die" ...On the bottom it says: "Biloxi Beach Mississippi" Consequently you can no longer buy these as that shop that sold these items is now underwater and/or completely destroyed by Katrina.

I also have three remaining bottles of Dandelion wine that I made myself. I have a large broadsword called "Carlos V" (Because that is the inscription)

I have a signed picture of John DeLancey as Q from STNG. A signed Peanut the Woozle doll. A shrine to my grandmother. And about fifty pieces of Amythyst. (It's weird like in that movie Conspiracy Theory! Everytime I see a hunk of Amythyst I have to buy it! Amythyst is my birth stone)

I have an Ochestra quality Ocarina.

A ton of Fencing trophies that I'm currently storing back at my parent's house and will eventually take to a local dump.

And most importantly, my fencing gear itself.


SHOW AND TELL TIME!!!

[CLOUD]

The first thing that i can think is a very old coin my uncle found years ago before my birth.His aunt had an old tower house which was quite usual in the early 1900's.When they destroyed it,in the mid 70's,my uncle found this really old coin with a skeleton head & 2 swords,the pirate marks,on it.It was on the debris.
As we found out much later,it was one of the coins the pirates in the Aegean sea used to cut by melting their loot.It's dated back to 1300,the time of the Byzantine Empire.
Other than that,we also have a rusty machine gun.My grandmother found it by accident while digging in the garden.In the 40's,when the Germans had invaded Greece,some members of the resistence killed some soldiers & so as to hide their weapons they buried them.

We have all sorts of things,but these ones stands out the most.They are what you might call relics.

[Helter Skelter]

My family never throws any old stuff away, and I've seemingly picked up the tradition. Saying that, I can't really think of much that I have in the way of old relics or treasures. I remembered that I still had a functioning NES and eight games yesterday, which I haven't played in years.

There's also a few old CDs I listened to between the ages of 12 and 14 which take me back, but I wouldn't call them treasures, haha. So much for Linkin Park albums having any value whatsoever.

I also have a small comic book collection. Some of them are Beano comics from the 90s, and several Beano annuals. I also have maybe two or three dozen American comic books from the mid-late 90s too.

None of that is really strange or obscure, though. If I think of some better items I may well return to this topic.

[Chez Daja]

I've always considered my penis to be somewhat of a weird relic.

I also consider it a treasure, as when combined with my hand, cures the lonliness of the night.


On a serious note, though... Hmm.

I have old things, like really old consoles that are impossible to find now. Sega Mega drives, Atari's and the like...

I guess you could say my grandads' guitar is sort of a treasure. It's a Spanish thing, from what I know, but with light wood. Although it's not a relic, I consider it special. It's very old now.

Hmm, what else? I have things from my other grandfather who came from the East. I've seen his war medals, and I have a very old leather bound bible. My mother sort of shares it with me. Back when the bible was hip, yo.

What else? I have an old black Nokia... y'know, one of the really chunky old ones. It's old enough to be considered an alien relic.

Well, I don't really have anything special that would be of interest to anyone but me. I have an awful lot of books, most of which are collected from charity shops. As a result, a lot of them have inscriptions on the cover page, things like, 'Dear Mary, I hope you enjoy your birthday! Lots of love, Rose.' I like to read things like that, and think about the people who wrote them; little messages written when the pages weren't yellow; it's kind of like a page caught in time, so to speak.

Erm...a Marmit soft doll thing that was my most prized posession up until I turned nine years old. My dad bought it for me a few weeks after I was born, from a seamstress in the Pyrenees. It's one of a kind, though is now missing an eye and quite a lot of its fur.

I have some old junk that came from a guy called Onion's house, years ago. An ancient set of dice; a fifty year old letter opener shaped like a sword; various Chinese obscurities.

Also, a set of pearls and other genuine 1950's jewelry given to me when my grandmother died in 1995. I didn't know her very well at the time, being five years old. Apparently when we lived in Nottingham we got on like a house on fire, and I always loved playing with her necklaces; so they were given to me. They're in a small box with a few letters that she wrote to me after we moved up here.

My proper camera is a genuine 1970's German Olympus SLR, donated to me by my uncle. Now, this thing is a complete oddity. It doesn't run like a normal camera. Much like the cameras of Discworld, I'm convinced that it's run completely from the inside by a grumpy technician of unknown species. It has a mind of it's own. One minute the aperture's fine; take the picture and it's closed itself up. Completely manual, terrible to use, but I've taken some nice shots with it, and still prefer it to the Vivitar Vivicam that I've got. The Vivicam has no attitude whatsoever; everything's so easy. Press a button and the shutter speed does what you tell it without argument. There's no fun in photography without being about to shout at your camera.

The dictionary I use is an oddity, published in 1901 or thereabouts. It's insane. Contains the widest variety of words you've never heard, but none of the ones you have heard. Omits all references to genitailia. Has a picture of a steamboat, with a caption that reads: 'Makes the fastest crossing to America in the world, from Plymouth to New York in just under five days.' Similarily, a picture of a plane, reading: 'The Kitty Tiger, the world's largest passenger plane, can carry up to seventeen passengers at once.' And then a picture of the full underground train system in London. No author listed, less a publisher. Apparently belonged to my grandmother.

That's about it. A pile of over 200 Glasgow Herald newspapers that grows every day and is awaiting recycling. A purse that hails from Florence. Beatles tapestry that was found, of all places, in Benidorm.

[Cloud Strife X]

I have a Chinese Yuan that I found in a library book once. I made it my "lucky Yuan" for no particular reason, and I carry it around in my wallet wherever I go. Does that count?

Beyond that, I have a highly treasured straw cowboy hat (a gift from a roommate of mine last year that died recently), an old John Edwards banner from the Democratic National Convention in 2004 (I was in the crowd when he was formally nominated as VP candidate, and was seen on CNN, standing right behind Joe Lieberman and Wolf Blitzer, for about ten seconds), the first toy that my parents ever bought me (a plastic police car, if you must know), a wooden car-type thing I made for a Cub Scout competition years ago, a necklace a with a small steel pentacle (for a future reminder of the time i'm spending living in Norway; though i'm not especially religious, i'd probably call myself a pagan) and some other assorted trinkets that I can't remember at the moment.

In addition, I have all sorts of little things I received/bought while I was in Cambodia last summer. The most valued are a set of traditional clothing that I still wear sometimes, a large amount of (practically worthless) Cambodian Riel, a monk's handbag (given to me by the "senior" monk at a Buddhist temple that I visited fairly frequently), and a set of cutlery (another gift from a monk; strange, I know).

If music counts, then throw in a tape of Eric Clapton's unplugged concert (the first music album/tape/whatever I ever owned), Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" (my first CD) and Limp Bizkit's "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water" (shameful, I know, but it brings back good memories of my early teenage years). Why I never got rid of the Limp Bizkit CD i'll never know, but oh well. Oh, and I think I have an ABBA 8-track sitting around somewhere.

Not old stuff at all, but stuff that means a lot to me. There ya go.