My education according to my student loans.

In 1977 I bought 2 1964 fender Stratocaster guitars. Both for $750.

A few years later a friend of a friend needed money and sold me both his 1963 fender telecasters.

Each guitar is worth north of $20k today.

My house. 20 years ago it cost $105K, today I could sell it for almost 3 times that.

I recently got my 35 year old car appraised and despite me buying it for $3500 13 years ago and putting nearly no work into it in that time, it's now worth $12000. Unfortunately I love the car and am unlikely to sell it. But about 1/3rd of the times I drive it, some random person will come up to me in a parking lot asking if I would ever consider selling it, so if I do it'll probably be pretty easy to sell. The car is a mark 3 Toyota supra in white, with a modest tasteful bodykit that seems to have proven to be ahead of it's time appearance-wise.

I know with what the entire used car market is like now, that's not as unexpected as most of these other posts, but it was certainly unexpected to me. Someone just told me out of the blue to get it appraised, so it got me curious enough to go through with it.

I have a few servers that I've put together, both towers and rack mount, that are fairly old in IT terms but would still sell for thousands used.

I pulled most of the parts out of the trash.

I have a few 3" tall pieces of vinyl that somehow seem to still be worth $500+ ea.

My wife and I dealt with some grief one summer by buying Pop figures. But we now have a bunch of figures that are still selling for $500 mint in box. Most of them have been opened and displayed, but we've got 5 that are MIB and all but one were purchased at the retail ($10). We were in it for the chase, so finding things at retail price was part of it. It was a great distraction.

I have two ones of Anchor Blocks. They're stone building blocks from Germany that my father bought me back in the early 90s. They're wonderful to build with.

There's a new company making them again, but for a decade or so they were out of manufacturing and would sell for $500-1000 a box.

https://anchor-stone.eurosourcellc.com/classic-anchor-blocks.html

They're very cool to build with. Since they're actual stone, they stack, stand, and balance in ways that wooden or plastic blocks don't. It's very rewarding to build with them.

I own a physical copy of Chrono Trigger, with the box and manual.

Bought 2 acres of wooded land in North Carolina for $60k, 2 years ago and built a house on one of the 1 acre lots. Now an empty 1 acres lot is going for $100k next door. I guess land really is a great investment if you find a deal.

I have a picture from my parents that's apparently now worth 3k-ish they got it for donating to a church when I was real young. Though I don't follow that religion it's still a neat picture (does not depict anything religious, is actually SciFi)

Nothing of high, high value either but one time I bought a box full of Yu-Gi-Oh cards at a garage sale. It was just a small christmas box but full of cards, often even in sleeves. The guy who sold it even asked me if he should get rid of them. He didn't know the box had something in it and thought I just wanted the box itself. I denied and asked for the price. The lowest he could get was 50ct for an item. Since it was a box and cards it was 2 items, so 1€ in total. The most valuable card is around 30€ at the moment, the full box around 100-120€.

I bought a Roland Jupiter 6 synthesizer for $1100 around 14 years ago. Are the time, the price definitely made me flinch. Last I checked, they are going for $8000-$10,000 on eBay.

I bought a funny drawing for $20 from Goodwill showing toony animals in an 80s office setting. It was extremely dated, down to portraying a mainframe computer with eyes on it, but there's something about it I find absolutely charming and it has a place of honor above my fireplace.

A few years later, I looked it up on a whim, and it turned out to be a limited-run lithograph called "Bits" by Robert Marble in 1983, and it was worth a hundred bucks then (closer to $250 now). There's only 750 copies of it ever made, and mine is a relatively low number (122).

There's no way in hell I'm selling it, but it's a really neat little story!

I have a few Gamecube games that people sell up to two hundred dollars. However, I take caution because supply is not demand.

I have a LOT of comic books and it always surprises me when a book comes out of flipping nowhere to become valuable.

Example:

https://gocollect.com/comic/marvel-tails-1

I have a lot of family military memorabilia, several pre world war 2 medals, one of the British military crosses (might be Victoria Cross), sword of honour from Sandhurst, signed documents/certificates from George VI.

I haven't got it all valued together, but I know the pre WW2 medals are £4k+ alone. I'd guess it's probably all worth ~£10k but it's nothing I'd ever sell, so it might as well be worth nothing, as I won't be liquidating that money.

Bought a couple copies of a Magic card for $20 each, then they shot up to $80 each. Then it got reprinted and now they're $25 each. (Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger)

A complete in the box Nintendo "New" 2DS XL Hylian Shield edition. Scooped it up for $150 used with games and now the handheld with the box and inserts sits around $600. No plans to sell it though, I'm a huge Zelda fanboy so I love it to bits.

What is the point of cross posting from another Lemmy site when they are interoperable? A "Ask Lemmy" war or competition?