keeps a picture of her on the dashboard of his car. I think that's rather sweet...and a good way for me to easily identify which silver Kia Soul in the parking lot is his (out of many--it's a popular vehicle here in NE Ohio).
I think that is something that I couldn’t sell even if I could get a nice chunk of money for it. Certainly not while your dad is still alive. And definitely not for as little as $50. But now you have a new fun detail to this little piece of family history — that he took the cup, not her. You know what is truly valuable? Learning details like that before they are buried forever.
Right? I'm way too sentimental to get rid of it...unless it's after Dad's gone and someone offers me a TON of money for it.
I don’t remember the Disney thing but people’s capacity to believe/hope something like that is true seems unlimited. One of my mom’s favorite TV shows was Antique Roadshow. She had a lot of junk (especially dishes!) in her house that she hoped was valuable.
I honestly think collectibles could become a thing of the past. One thing that made items so collectible, and valuable, in the past was people usually didn't know they were collectible. Kids stuck what would now be valuable baseball cards in the spokes of their bicycle tires. Toys were opened and played with, HARD. Fine china got passed down or sold for practically nothing at garage sales. Nowadays, too many people look at something and *think* it will be valuable some day, so they store it away, only to find later there's no demand for it. Beanie Babies are a great example of that.
On a related note (to the story of your mother thinking her dishes could be valuable)...we have not one but two silverware drawers. One is filled with what we used to consider the "good" silverware (but is, in reality, not all that good). The other is filled with the "everyday" silverware, which my mother got 1-2 pieces at a time whenever she shopped at, and spent a certain amount of money at, Rogers, which was our local grocery chain long before Giant Eagle came along. Somewhere along the way, we lost all but one of the table spoons; we still have a number of serving spoons and about a half dozen long-handled spoons like you might use in a root beer float.