I'm currently building a Guzheng out of wood from the cherry tree I used to hang out in as a kid that got destroyed in a fire with only part of the trunk remaining. Maybe only 4/10 interesting but if this were a fantasy setting that's at least a +2 magic instrument right there for the backstory its got.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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i have a replica PDP-11 that i built from a kit. i think it's very cool looking.
i also have the first version of the espruino. it's a tiny microcontroller (a computer on a chip) that can only run javascript (the thing you build websites with). and not modern javascript either, the wonky 2010 kind. it's completely useless.
I went to the Ghibli museum and watched a short while I was there. The ticket to the short was a from strip from one of the movies. I have it framed.
A pre-prohibition bottle of creme de menthe shaped like a giraffe.
It's a bit higher proof than creme de menthe typically made today, not that you should drink it because it probably has dangerous chemicals coloring it green.
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 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!
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.
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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 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.
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.
That's very cool. Where do you find such things, are you like an archaeologist or just a very attentive and lucky person?
It's amazing our ancestors just kept these things lying around for so long.
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!
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!
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
I use a sound mixer for my computer audio. So I have real faders to control discord, YouTube, games... It's surprisingly great.
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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.
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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 on~~ fidget with them
Most 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 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.
Some of my favorites are sailmaking tools, like the lignum vitae seam rubber, or the ebony fid. Even the rest of the ditty bag is fun—the sailor's palm, the tarred marline, the triangular-shank hand needles, et cetera.
Either the wizard staff or the didgeridoo. Not sure which.
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.
If you don't live in Australia, I'd think the didgeridoo.
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