For me, I wish I had kept old Argos catalogues. That was something that felt so mediocre at the time, but looking back now, those are valuable resources for what was popular.
What mediocre things do you regret getting rid of?
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For me, I wish I had kept old Argos catalogues. That was something that felt so mediocre at the time, but looking back now, those are valuable resources for what was popular.
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My wife. Useless at points but can see she had some value.
Can I brighten your day with https://retromash.com/argos/
Sold my furby at a car boot sale for £2.50. Immediate regret
Mentioning old Argos catalogues evokes a memory of the smell.
I regret getting rid of all my old workbooks from school. It would have been nice to look back at them from time to time.
I threw away A perfectly good small CRT tv with built in VHS and DVD, needed that for my old PlayStation so I bought one which isn’t as good.
Ah, the laminated book of dreams!
I’ve got a bunch of Argos catalogues up the loft. I worked there for a few years and was sad enough to keep a copy of each one from whilst I was there.
They’re all here –
https://retromash.com/argos/
Handheld camcorder…
I had a babyliss rotating brush that I rarely used. But it’s the only thing that’s ever managed to add volume to my hair so actually I regret it as it was nice to have for the times I wanted to do something different with my hair.
Old phone books because I trace my family history
Gareth Southgate
When I moved, I gave my Christmas decorations to Oxfam. I regret that so much now. I had had them for decades.
A long time ago i was asked what i was keeping and what i was getting rid of. I had had a really awful day at school and said "throw all of it away". The two items i most recall were my 101 Dalmatians Giga Pet and a book of school playground poetry.
There were other things but i most remember those.
I miss the book the most. I’ve not been able to find another and i can’t recall what it was called.
I’ve still got one in the bookshelf, couldn’t bring myself to chuck it.
All of the car brochures that I collected from the early 90s – early 2000s
Things like old computer mice, keyboards and rotary phones.
My toddler loves playing with stuff like that, luckily my MIL had an old wired telephone (not rotary) that he plays with but one that has a handset that he can pick up and slam down!
I’m sure I could buy them second hand if I looked hard enough though.
I threw out all my old Urban Decay lipsticks (the very first ones that looked like bullet casings and sold in a plastic case at the Urban Outfitters checkout counter) because I was going through a “purge.” I also threw out my original Revlon Skinlight powders. All of them sell for ridiculous prices on eBay now, even used. The lipsticks I’d want to keep for myself as collectors items, though.
A proper big tagine – present from step mum and wasn’t really that deep into cooking but wish I had it now.
She’s also passed so works have been nice but do have many other things.
I sent a beautiful pair of boots back to Next because the heels wore too fast. They apologised and refunded me, but what I really wanted was the boots 😭
One of the old McDonald’s cocaine spoons.
I keep on hoping that my mum who never throws anything out will ask me if I still want it.
Do you mean ‘mundane’?
Scalextric
I got rid of nearly all of my stuff about ten years ago and don’t really miss anything, tbh.
And I’ve now got a bunch o new, other stuff.
When I was younger I sold my turtles, thundercats, ghostbusters, and HEMAN figures for 40 bucks. Wish I never sold them.
I had a pre-release beta copy of Doom on a 3.5in floppy disk, with the logo printed on the label. Kept it for ages, then threw it out.
Wish I’d kept it now, because it was a cool bit of gaming history memorabilia.
I cut up all my old issues of Manga Mania. I wish I had them all back again. Also my old Battlebeasts annual.
My Fave Five books. I lived in them for years.
When I was a kid, I had all the Thomas the Tank Engine diecast trails. They were buggered because I used to crash them into each other to they lost a lot of paint. My parents regret not buying two so they could’ve kept one in the packet
"but looking back now, those are valuable resources for what was popular"
Why would you ever need to know what was popular?
The word for this is ephemera. I guess there is a fine line between preserving such stuff and being a hoarder.
The superb Maplin catalogues that you had to pay for, that had fantastic covers.
Massive stack of Viz comics. Massive pile of NMEs every single week from about 1988 to 1994. Little did I know they would be of interest to anyone in the future, I sort of assumed that tastes would move on rather than the bands from those times still being very much touchstone bands.
Yes, an Argos catalogue would be an invaluable resource for an economic and social historian in about a hundred years’ time. I wonder what they would make of it.
My Pokémon cards 🙁
I had the original ones (including that special Mew card you got from watching the first movie in cinemas) when I was 9/10 but when I turned 13 I was too cool for Pokémon so threw them all away.
I used to have this stack of scratch and sniff cards that came free in some magazine in the mid 90s. They were like strawberry, pine, cinnamon, bubblegum, soil, some other weird ones … but one was skunk (as in the animal). It absolutely honked and made all the others stink too so I threw them out. I’ve never been able to describe the smell (and never smelled a skunk so dno if it was actually the same) and I’d quite like another sniff of it out of morbid curiosity.
More than mediocre, now I have a 10 year old I regret selling my Space crusade, with add on sets, for £5 at a car boot sale when I was a teenager.
The instruction manuals of all my video games
Had a hifi system that was gathering dust after I bought a bigger set for my living room, so I sold it. It was one of those big ones you see in the meme photos. 3 CD changer, twin cassette, never had a problem with it. Got a pittance compared to what they’re now worth.
I wished I had it back so badly when I wanted to set up a secondary system in the other room so I could listen to music while working from home. Even though I eventually got a different system that’s arguably a better fit for the space I still have the model number for my old one saved as a search on Ebay.
My Nokia 3310 would love a classic game of snake
My screen is propped up by a 1992 yellow pages