I had a friend (still have the friend, though we don’t have regular access to each other anymore) who liked to “show off” how obscure some of his possessions were, possibly to achieve the “wanderlust effect” (i.e. the reaction of “how did you get these here”). Something about the anticipation that his inventory was alien to whoever he showed.
One day, he was asked to bring games and a console and he brought one of those extremely rare knock-off bootleg gaming consoles they sell in Asia, which we’re not even remotely near.
“What the heck is that” asked my other best friend?
“It’s the Mega Duck. I brought CFGP with me too.”
“Why can’t you be a normal Upstate New Yorker? We literally got Playstation.”
“What fun is that?”
It wasn’t some small quirk either. One day he took a long walk and came across a part of the area nobody had been to in decades and took pictures with my camera which he happened to have. Also having hyperthymesia, he came back and was all like “I took these photos of a place that seems like it was out of a fantasy painting and also recognized someone there who was on the missing persons list when I came back”. Like a boss.
In contrast, alas, ever since moving, my possessions have become overwhelmingly mundane enough you’d expect most of it to be in an 18th century post-colonial American home, the exception (if you could call her that), ironically, being my dog who is of a rare breed.
What’s the most wanderlusty thing you own, something that would be the absolute opposite of mundane if in your possession?
I own a Curta Type II calculator.
Holy shit! A real one?
Yup! SN 528128 Got it off eBay. Apparently the previous owner passed away and his daughter sold it. Paid $1300 for it. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever spent that much money on and I regret nothing.
It had some issues when I got it doing division. It tended to jam up turning in reverse. But I was able take it apart to get it working. One of the metal tabs wasn’t bent quite enough. Makes sense since these thing were all hand assembled and tuned.
I looked up the serial number on curtamania, and saw some checkins from various previous owners. It was pretty wild that someone even uploaded a photo. Not of a Curta calculator, but my Curta calculator.
That’s cool as fuck. I showed this to my fiancée but she didn’t seem to understand how cool this is.
I also have a much cheaper mechanical calculator, one of the ones you dial in the numbers with your pencil and only goes up to 9999 before the digits overflow. When I get up in the morning I’ll see if I can find it.
I just watched a video on this like an hour ago. Awesome stuff.
i have a clock made from nixie tubes
I MADE a clock with nixie tubes. I gave it a friend who is notoriously difficult to buy for. It was the only thing I’d ever heard him express an interest in that I knew he wouldn’t buy for himself. We both talked about how cool it was.
Now it sits on his entertainment center and every time I visit, I’m envious that I don’t have one. How stupid is that? I have to get around to building one for myself.
Oh wow, how are they built? I want to make one!
You can watch some videos on it but generally it’s not too hard. You buy the circuit board and solder all the parts on according to the instructions. The nixie tubes must be bought separately. They were only ever made in the USSR so most come from Russia. Buy extras because they are so old some fail. Then just power that sucker up. The tubes are quite fiddly and there are different types and sizes so you have to buy the board for the type you are building. The real fun is building the case of your choice.
Thank you!
From the ones I’ve seen, those are cool.
Can I ask where you came across such a thing? The only ones I’ve ever seen are from drop.com
They’re actually reasonably priced on AliExpress.
Great, thank you I’ll go digging!
i got it as a gift from my brother ~20 years ago. im sure he bought it online somewhere
Ah, good gift! Sounds like they have some staying power haha
So cool! Did it come as a kit or already assembled? I want one!
it was already put together…but i do need to replace one tube. after 20 years of constant use a few filaments have burned out in one of the tubes
Ooooh! Are they difficult to repair? That’s an incredible lifespan
its just a soldered on tube (with ~13 pins) , so im not expecting it to be terribly difficult
Good luck! Thanks for sharing!
I collect books and have a number signed by people who are no longer with us. :(
One of the Wheel of Time books signed by Robert Jordan.
Martian Chronicles signed by Ray Bradbury.
X-Men #1 signed by Stan Lee.
The early Rocketeer appearances signed by Dave Stevens.
A Contract With God limited edition #33/125 signed by Will Eisner.
Thieve’s World graphic novels signed by Tim Sale.
I adore the wheel of time. First fantasy series I ever chewed through (and then waited about 5 or 10 years for publishing lol). Very happy for you, kudos!
My buddy has a script from the original broadway production of Beauty and the Beast, signed by Alan Menkin (he wrote the music) and several cast members.
He found it in a Half Price Books for like $5, because nobody had noticed the signatures inside the front cover. Unfortunately, due to the fact that there’s no chain of custody, there’s no way to actually verify that it’s real. After all, anybody with a sharpie and some practice could have made the signatures. But it’s a great conversation piece.
Idk if it fits the criteria, but I have a fairly substantial arrowhead collection. Some dating back about 10,000 years. I found them all myself.
It’s amazing our ancestors just kept these things lying around for so long.
That’s very cool. Where do you find such things, are you like an archaeologist or just a very attentive and lucky person?
I use a sound mixer for my computer audio. So I have real faders to control discord, YouTube, games… It’s surprisingly great.
Sweet! Do you have a special audio interface for your PC? I’ve got a mixer as well, though only one audio output from my PC (I use it to mix my two PCs, instruments, and the baby monitor).
Yeah, USB audio device, the mixer shows up as 3 different devices, which makes things easy. I also mix with another computer, and the phone!
1998 sun micro system graphics workstation with complete driver set and user Manuel’s, original monitor and keyboard
Manuel will be so glad you kept his monitor and keyboard
I won’t even edit that. It’s golden
It’s really great and conjures up a very different story than what you want for.
Chefs kiss
I have a bunch of weird stuff, but I rarely show it off.
Tooth from a dinosaur, not sure what kind, it was found by a herder in a remote area, but some sort of preditor as its pointy.
Two 19th century swords that were from both sides of the French colonial expeditions in West Africa. One has magic powers (or, so the guy that sold it to me said). A number of other supposed enchanted items and charms.
Jar of sand from the Sahara outside Timbuktu and the Playa at Burning Man. Stones from I guess around the middle of Mt Olympus, and bunch of giant quartz crystals from southern Africa. A pin given to basically every Soviet citizen that was alive during (and therefore coined as fighting in) WWII.
Ticket to one of the Obama election night parties.
I have a gallon of methylene chloride.
Huh, I’ve got a collection of not necessarily dangerous, but hard to find chemicals. DCM (methylene chloride) is still something I’ve been unable to find. It’s an incredibly useful solvent especially for adhering bitumen felt to itself.
Are you near NYC?
What periodic table number is it?
It’s CH2Cl2, so it’s 5 different atoms.
It’s not an element. It’s a chemical that was used for stripping paint, but the government banned selling it to the public as a paint stripper just because people kept dying.
I’m a spiteful libertarian. I do not tolerate the government’s attempts to protect me from my own bad judgement. Therefore I legally bought a gallon of it from a chemical supply company. (Why did I think I would need a gallon?) I tried to make my own paint stripper from it but I couldn’t get it to form a gel. (How could I have known that randos on the internet could provide wrong directions?)
I haven’t gotten rid of it because it was expensive so now it just sits in my freezer. I’ll give it away for free to anyone who wants to come pick it up…
I don’t know if it still is, but it was a suspected carcinogen at some point. It also isn’t great. For the ozone layer (but better than CHCl3 or CCl4). I think that’s the main reasons it isn’t widely available for the public now.
It also easily permeates nitrile gloves. Can’t remember if it’s the same for latex.
I have a small rock from Antarctica.
I have a necklace with a piece of 6,000 year old bog oak on it.
I have tiny pieces from three different meteorites: one from outer space, one from the moon, and one from Mars.
Aren’t all Meteorites from space?
All matter is from space.
Is the rock from Antarctica one of the meteorites?
No, it’s just a small rock I picked up from the beach. afaik, there’s nothing special about it.
The beach of Antarctica? What were you doing there?
They were picking up rocks.
I have a bottle of gin I distilled myself using botanicals that only grow in Patagonia.
And a set of early modern period plate armor.I went to the Ghibli museum and watched a short while I was there. The ticket to the short was a film strip from one of the movies. I have it framed.
I was in a book club as a kid so now I have a first edition of Game of Thrones.
That’s really awesome, but concerning that someone would give it to a child.
I hoard weird dice. I’ve got crystal-shaped dice that roll like pins, dodecahedral d4s, dice with Roman numerals, two d30s, two d60s, a glow-in-the-dark d100 slightly larger than a golf ball, and I have spherical dice that I pull out when i want to give somebody an aneurysm. The only ones I regularly use is my glow-in-the dark sets and my liquid core sets with a floating eyeball inside them.
Next up is metal spinner dice and roulette wheel dice, since regular metal dice are kinda loud when you
chew onfidget with themMost relevant to your post is that i have dozens upon dozens of d10s. I have more d10s than d6s (and I used to play 40k as Orks so that says a lot). This sometimes gets reactions out of people when they see my dice box. I wish there was a cool reason, but the reason for it is that I ran a short campaign in Engine Heart as a high schooler and got a little too excited about its dice pool system.
Nice.
I just bought a set of weird dice, and they’re a bit of a disappointment. Someone made them by carving the right number of facets off a sphere at random and numbering them. They couldn’t possibly roll fairly. Not what I expected from the photos.
I have a kaleidoscope for the blind.
One of only 150 or 250 made (I forget which). The artist (Reinhold Marxhausen) got Alzheimer’s in his final years, and is probably dead now. It looks like a metal blob, but the inside is hollow and it has are springs that vibrate and make tones to the slightest touch and heat change. Just shake it and hold it to your ear. It makes different and unique sounds depending on who is holding it, the weather, the air temperature, and so on.
I got it from a kaleidoscope collector, who sold it to me because the small handmade box it came in was damaged in shipping, and it wasn’t worth as much without the box. I keep it in a handmade suede bag.
Edit: I made an Imgur post about it: https://imgur.com/gallery/kaleidoscope-blind-Ab8Xz
Either the wizard staff or the didgeridoo. Not sure which.
If you don’t live in Australia, I’d think the didgeridoo.
Wizards staff? Could you please elaborate?
I made a wizard staff. It’s about 7 feet long, is made from an old Christmas tree, and has a large amethyst crystal embedded in it.
I’m on the left, my partner is on the right.
For the extra bit of magic, I actually set the gem into the staff (set in with epoxy) at the peak of the October 2023 annular eclipse.
