I'd be rich today if I had held onto what?

[LennG]

I think we all have had things, sometime in the past, that we wish we still had, as they seem to be worth a lot of money today.

What did you, or someone else, get rid of in the past, that you wish you had held onto for today?

Myself, when I was a youth, I used to go to Ebbetts Field on a regular basis to watch my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. Back in those days, players were more than happy to sign anything you put in front of them and do it again and again, During my times a fan with these Dodgers, I acquired, let's just say, a plethora of autographs, that, on the market today, I might be a rich man. I must have had over 10 Jackie Robinsons, everything from programs, to baseball cards, even an old 8x10 of him. I had basically every Dodger player who played, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Resse, etc. Add to that, I had several opposing players also, like Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, and the immortal Willie Mays.
Add to that all the baseball cards from that day, like several Mickey Mantles.

I shudder when I think that my dear Mother, decided to clean up my room when I went into the service and thought this shoebox full of 'stuff' was a waste of time, so out it went. I could be on a yacht somewhere in the Pacific right about now (my OWN yacht).

So what did anyone else have that they just wish they still had possession of today?

[jimv]

Lenny, it looks like we both had Mothers who not only loved us but wanted to see that our rooms & possessions were always nice & tidy.

When I was growing up, the man next door worked for the publishing company that printed all the Comic Books.  Weekly, he brought me copies of the comics that would hit the stands the following week.  These included new series that they'd be trying out; e.g., BATMAN!!!

Naturally, she decided, at some point, to clean up the mess of useless comic books to tidy things up,

Oh well, what might have been!

[LennG]

Funny you mention comics. I never really saved them, so my mother couldn't have thrown them out, but if I would have realized how valuable some of the comics that I did have, back then, would be today?????

As you said, what might have been?

[Blue4Life]

Somewhat unrelated...

Holding on stocks can have shorter time to realize gains, where parents/spouses cannot have a tag sale them... 

Back in the day money was in short supply, but had one stock in my early days in the market, that did not do much. Sold my stock, invested in gold mine company's "penny-stock" and it paid-off. I've purchased my first computer, 486 DX66, 1 MBs memory and 425 MBs HDD, on close to 300% stock price gain in 3-4 month.

I still do try to finance larger purchases on the same way, with a batting average of about .500. As they say, stock market is a nationwide casino...

[Jolly Blue Giant]

The first two responses hit home to me as well. My mother did not clean out my stuff, I accidentally burned down my parent's house while playing with chemicals. Please don't try this at home, but I used to mix potassium permanganate with glycerin (yup, the primary ingredient of TNT). I was 12 and it was in the middle of February. I had done the experiment a dozen times without incident. I would crush the pp into a fine powder and shape it like a volcano on a cookie sheet. Drop of few drops of glycerol on the top and it starts a stream of smoke and eventually starts to blow flame out the top like a real volcano. We came home from church and the preacher's kid came with us. He begged me to show him that experiment so I said, "okay". So rather than crush the pp into powder (pp is crystals about the size of rock salt that you'd put on your sidewalk), I just grabbed a piece of aluminum foil and went out on our 2nd floor deck. There was about a foot of snow at the time. I put the foil down, poured a whole bunch of pp onto the foil (uncrushed) and figured, "might as well make it a big one because we're all outside and what could go wrong". Because the pp wasn't crushed, the endothermic reaction didn't become obvious. After putting drops over and over on the pp with no response, I finally poured the whole bottle of glycerin on the crystals. Unbelievably, the crystals moved into the shape of a softball and was one solid piece. I touched it and it was cold. My mother was calling us down for Sunday dinner (chuck roast, potatoes, etc...standard Sunday meal at our house). So, I figured the chemicals were dead and like an idiot, I wrapped up the remains in the tin foil and left them on the deck next to the sliding doors. My dad was saying the blessing when we heard a light "boom". He stopped his prayer for a second and we all looked up. Then came the monstrous explosion that made our ceiling buckle over our heads and drop crap all over us. The entire second floor was pretty much engulfed in flames.....and that was a sad regrettable day in my life as a kid. I never played with chemicals again and lost all interest in collecting them as I had for the past couple of years.

Anyway: I had a big box full of baseball cards that were mostly Yankees because that was my team (Mantle, Maris, Yogi, Whitey, you name it - mostly from the late 50's to early 60's) and they burned up in the fire. I also had a large stack of Batman comic books as Batman was the only character I loved back then. They burned up. As did my coin collection and pretty much everything else I owned and stored in my closet 

But that was one of the only times I lost things that would have been valuable today. In my case, it was cars! Instead of storing cars that I bought between 1968 and 1974, I'd sell them because I was bored with them at the time and wanted something different. I bought a 2-door '55 Chevy without a speck of rust or a dent (but was missing the driver's side window) for 50 bucks, turned it over for a 100...duhhh. I had a '64 Chevelle, '69 Road Runner, '69 GTX, '71 Cuda, a '72 TR6, etc. Many of my old cars are now worth tens of thousands.

Anyway, that's some of what I wish I still had. My father blew it even bigger. My mother was born and raised in Florida (St. Pete) and my father from Broome County, NY. My parents lived in Florida for a year or two after they married and my dad returned from the Korean War. My father hated it down there. While he was there, my uncle on my mother's side tried to convince him to buy property outside the city limits. Property could be had for 2.00 (or less) an acre. My father told him he was nuts because it was nothing but swamp, snakes, and bugs. So he passed. Now the area is built up with malls, major buildings/corporations, stores, etc. He'd be a millionaire had he held on to several hundred acres for 20 years or so.