Why it lost its value: Commenters actually split on whether this one lost value at all: one coworker's retirement-fund logic is met with skepticism, while others insist 90s and early-2000s cards, made scarcer by that era's sales slump, are only becoming more collectible.

What readers reported: I'm sure Pokémon cards are more popular now than ever before.

Limit: I have remained skeptical that future generations will give a shit, and that the pokemon company will probably keep making new ones.

Why it lost its value: CLIÉ owners aren't talking resale value so much as attachment to the hardware itself, recalling the jog wheel and metal build with real fondness even though the units they kept have since gone dark.

What readers reported: it has such handsome metal lines, I loved it

Limit: that hasn't powered up in years and probably needs a new battery at least

Why it lost its value: SkyMall shows up here purely as flight-boredom nostalgia — a catalog of gadgets like the Sharper Image Stormtrooper that existed to be daydreamed over before phones or seatback screens gave passengers anything else to do.

What readers reported: The best part of flying back then was flipping pages of that slice of heaven with crazy things to dream about owning.

Why it lost its value: Commenters describe watching a genuine childhood ritual (thumbing through gold-embossed volumes, being scolded for folding page corners) collapse within a decade once Encarta, AltaVista, and then Wikipedia made a $3,000 shelf of books obsolete before some buyers even finished paying for it.

What readers reported: I recall my mum arguing with my dad that he paid £3000 for the Whole 30 volumes compendium way back in the early 90s... it encouraged me to get into the habit to be inquiring and seek knowledge.

Limit: Father of someone I know was trying to get rid of his immaculate full set a couple of years ago. "Couldn't even give them away" ... Even op-shops in the area turned them down.

Why it lost its value: Families argue less about the china itself than about who has to store, wash, or eventually inherit it, while a smaller but vocal group has simply started eating off the good stuff every day rather than let a wedding-registry set sit behind glass.

What readers reported: My wife eats her breakfast and drinks her coffee every morning using China and silverware that would've cost a fortune twenty or thirty years ago. Her friends rave about how elegant her home-cooked meals are when they visit.

Limit: A lot of fancy china has gold details in the pattern, so you can't microwave it — and it's hand-wash only, which is what pushed many sets straight into permanent storage.

Why it lost its value: Movers, not buyers, dominate the pool table thread: multiple commenters describe tables passing from owner to owner as a mandatory condition of a house sale rather than a purchase anyone actively wanted, with the slate itself running 400 to 600 pounds per section.

What readers reported: Pool table conveys, whether you want it or not!

Limit: After watching like 3 videos I decided that I would fuck something up and crack the slate, so I hired some specialists to move it for me. It was $900.

Why it lost its value: One owner admits the baskets still make their blood boil, and the thread backs that up with hard numbers: what once ran thousands of dollars for hand-woven Ohio craftsmanship now sells for about $6 at Goodwill.

What readers reported: Many of them can actually be used for their intended purpose. We still use the waste baskets, picnic, recipes.

Limit: A friend's wife spent over $20,000 on 20-30 Longaberger, Hummel, and Waterford pieces; they're now just referred to as "Dust Collectors".

Why it lost its value: Unlike most items here, Mikasa Charisma Black actually draws people wanting to buy or trade for it — thrifted, inherited, and used daily by fans of the black-and-purple-iris pattern — even though at least one owner has nowhere to display the set she inherited.

What readers reported: That's my pattern. Inherited it and love it. Black with the purple iris. I use it daily.

Limit: My late mother had this set. I have it in storage for when I get a house... but have no space for it in my condo.

Why it lost its value: Sterling flatware is the rare heirloom in this group whose value is tied to a commodity rather than taste, so when spot silver climbed above $70 an ounce, the set two daughters refused at their weddings quietly became worth a fortune to the mother who kept it.

What readers reported: Last laugh! It's now worth a fortune.

Limit: Fine china... Sterling silver flatware: needs polishing and hand washing, cannot be washed in the dishwasher.

Why it lost its value: Owners describe a working grandfather clock as a paradox — the chimes still mean childhood to the people who grew up with them, yet there's so little demand that getting rid of one increasingly means paying someone to haul it away rather than finding a buyer.

What readers reported: My parents have a beautiful one and the chimes are the sound of my childhood.

Limit: They are big and heavy, still work fine, used to be extremely expensive but there is almost no demand for them anymore and you basically have to pay someone to take it.

Why it lost its value: The decanter's decline reads less like changing taste and more like a recalled product: commenters cite the documented fact that spirits left standing in lead crystal leach lead into the liquor, which is why secondhand listings for these now flood marketplace sites instead of getting used as bar decor.

Limit: Turns out leaving booze in them leaches the lead into the liquor... that has been known for a long time.

Why it lost its value: This entry is backed by an unusually concrete data point rather than a general vibe: one commenter still has 1990s appraisals on inherited antiques that are, in the same condition today, worth roughly a tenth of their original valuation.

Limit: Nobody wants antiques, china, or glassware even in good condition.

Why it lost its value: The single supporting comment here is about logistics, not sentiment or resale value: a company fire safe so large and dense that moving it the first time took levers, rollers, and an electric trolley, and the second time simply took four exceptionally strong men.

What readers reported: 6' by 4' by about 3' and extremely solid.

Limit: First time was hi-tech with levers, rollers and an electric trolley thing. Second time 4 of the biggest men I've ever seen turned up and just heaved the thing into its new home.

Why it lost its value: A grandson describes pricing his grandparents' Hummel 'retirement investment' on eBay and finding hundreds of listings offering barely more than shipping cost, with only the rarest piece clearing thirty dollars of profit before the family gave up in frustration. Other commenters push back on the blanket write-off, noting a real secondary market existed at UK antique fairs and auctions for pieces in good condition.

What readers reported: They were valuable once... I don't like them but they still bring her joy which is what matters.

Limit: They were never really valuable though... there was never much of a resale market. Noone was buying and selling them outside of retail.

Why it lost its value: Beanie Baby owners argue past each other in the same thread: one cites confirmed sale records showing the rarest tag variants have genuinely fetched $2,000-3,000, while most others describe boxes worth nothing beyond memory, including one bought for $100 that ended up as a dog's chew toy. The gap between a handful of authenticated rarities and a mountain of ordinary ones is the whole story here.

What readers reported: I love my bears. They are worth something to me. Not everything is about money.

Limit: The five figure prices people repeat online are not backed by verified sales.

Why it lost its value: Beyond the familiar story of inherited figurines landing in the trash when a parent downsized, this item has a genuine second act commenters keep bringing up unprompted: an online community buys up old Precious Moments cheaply specifically to repaint them into goth or horror-style 'Altered Moments,' giving the pieces a new kind of value as raw material rather than as collectibles.

What readers reported: There is a whole community of folks repainting them. They end up looking like Funko pops. Very cool.

Limit: the drip heads literally went in the trash. NOBODY wants them.

Why it lost its value: Commenters treat Funko Pops less as a fresh phenomenon than a rerun, directly comparing today's buyers to the Hummel and Beanie Baby collectors of earlier decades and asking pointedly what makes this round any different; when one person claimed their Pops were appreciating in value, the reply was immediate sarcasm rather than agreement.

What readers reported: In some fandoms, a Funko pop might be the only official merch you can get.

Limit: That's exactly what everyone said about Hummel, Beanie Babies, etc. What makes you think these are different?

Why it lost its value: The single documented account of these dolls has a daughter walking her visiting mother through an antique store and watching her genuinely struggle to process how cheaply holiday-edition Barbies — kept for years like a nest egg — were selling. The same thread's answer to her mother's 'what are people collecting now?' was Labubu, Stanley cups, and Crocs, which says plenty about how fast the definition moves.

Limit: buying them was supposedly, per one reply, 'a financial safety net' that the antique-store prices didn't bear out.

Why it lost its value: Royal Doulton china turns up in the same secondhand-shopping story as the Barbies and Hummels, spotted by a mother who'd assumed pieces like this held their price and was stunned to find them going for next to nothing. Nobody in the thread claims to still want it; the closest thing to a modern replacement mentioned was Stanley cups and Labubu.

Limit: the whole point of buying it was supposedly a 'financial safety net,' not something anyone describes actually cashing in.

Why it lost its value: Wedgwood pottery is the third name on the same mother's antique-store list, grouped with the Hummels and Barbies as something she'd once assumed was safely valuable and was shocked to see priced like ordinary shelf clutter. The thread's own suggestion for what replaced this kind of collecting — Labubu, tennis shoes, video game skins — underlines how completely the category has turned over.

Limit: it was bought, like the rest of the list, as a supposed store of value the antique-store prices didn't confirm.

Why it lost its value: One thread describes a family tradition where a grandmother assigned every grandchild a collectible to keep, and the cousins who ended up with spoons considered themselves lucky purely because the pile fit in a drawer, unlike the relative stuck with a 'brass' collection that needed a storage unit.

What readers reported: Kind of envied the cousins who got spoons and thimbles because they were at least compact.

Limit: I've become the dumping ground for family members' knick-knacks.

Why it lost its value: A longtime collector worries less about today's prices than about tomorrow's buyers, predicting that younger people's disinterest in old cards means even his genuinely valuable ones won't find takers in another twenty years — a demand problem rather than a fakery or mass-production one.

What readers reported: baseball cards, which are somehow incredibly valuable

Limit: even my ones with value will not have buyers in another 20 years

Why it lost its value: The same collector lumps his comic books in with his baseball cards, betting that generational disinterest, not condition or rarity, is what eventually leaves a collection without buyers; a separate, unrelated mention of comics in this set turned out to be a decades-old memory rather than a current claim.

Limit: his stated worry is that younger people simply aren't interested, leaving no buyers regardless of a book's actual value.

Why it lost its value: Of every figurine line named across this whole category, one commenter singles out Snowbabies specifically as the creepiest, filing the entire line under 'pointless garbage' in the same breath.

Limit: Snowbabies take the creepy crown, but they're all pointless garbage.

Why it lost its value: The one account of these plates is a daughter's dryly sarcastic anticipation of inheriting her mother's kitchen wall display, which she points out gets greasy and is never actually cleaned — hardly the language of someone who expects real value in what's coming to her.

Limit: get all gross and she never cleans

Why it lost its value: A single commenter files Dreamsicles alongside Hummel and Precious Moments as the third member of what they call the 'old boomer trifecta' of figurines everyone assumed were valuable, without offering any further detail beyond the label itself.

Limit: the scare quotes around 'valuable' in the original comment signal the commenter doesn't believe the premise.

Why it lost its value: One owner volunteers, almost as an aside while defending Precious Moments collectors from judgment, that their own household's Michael Garman statues are worthless now — a rare case in this category of someone naming their own collection's decline unprompted rather than a relative's.

Limit: We have Michael Garmen statues that are worthless now

Why it lost its value: The single mention of a thimble collection comes buried in a list of other people's castoffs, spoons, a shadow box of tiny figurines, assorted statues, that one commenter says they've simply become the designated dumping ground for.

Limit: Ive become the dumping ground for family members knick nacks.

Why it lost its value: Parents who once banned these from their kids' closets are now watching resale listings for the same velour sets sell at or above original retail, as teens rediscover them and shoppers track down toddler- and pet-sized versions purely for nostalgia.

What readers reported: Yes, you’re right, a vintage one will sell at the original price or more

Limit: found a set in my closet a couple of years ago and they no longer fit

Why it lost its value: Commenters draw a hard line by decade: 90s Coach bags in real leather are commanding resale prices well above what people originally paid, while the 2000s canvas-and-leather-trim line that nearly sank the company gets written off as worthless.

What readers reported: I still use all of them. Haven't bought a new purse since.

Limit: Coach bags from the 2000s are worthless now despite being quite expensive at the time.

Why it lost its value: Nearly everyone weighing in still calls the brand gaudy, yet in the same threads they describe it resurfacing on teenagers, at NYE parties, and on shelves at Lids and Urban Outfitters, with one seller reporting brisk resale traffic.

What readers reported: I’ve sold 10 Ed Hardy shirts in the last month and a half.

Limit: It was tacky and revolting in 2006. I was in disbelief that anybody liked it back then, and I still am today.

Why it lost its value: The popped-collar shirts that once bought a seat at the cool-kids table now split opinion between shoppers paying real money for 20-year-old sweaters and zip-ups and former fans walking into current stores disappointed that the old raised, stitched lettering has been swapped for cheap printed logos at the same steep prices.

What readers reported: AF clothes from 20 years ago are actually in high demand and fetch high prices. The little knit sweaters with the moose, the lace camis, and the thick cotton zip ups.

Limit: I was very disappointed to see how much the quality of their clothes had dropped, particularly the sweaters... Now it is just that cheap plastic printed stuff. Still costs an arm & a leg though.

Why it lost its value: Unlike the other entries in this subcategory, this one barely sparked a conversation: someone simply named it as an outdated status item, and the only reply on record is a brief confirmation that the commenter still owns one, with no debate over resale value or a modern comeback to speak of.

Why it lost its value: Commenters split on the BlackBerry itself: several recall blind-typing at 40 wpm on the physical keyboard, and one still runs a Q25 daily for reading and writing, while another calls switching to it from Palm OS 'a huge downgrade' and describes having two devices stolen outright.

What readers reported: I could type 40 wpm on that Blackberry.

Limit: I fucking hated mine. Huge downgrade from Palm OS, like going back a decade.

Why it lost its value: Nearly every storage anecdote here follows the same beat: an adult confidently told a kid some kilobyte or gigabyte figure was more than they'd ever need, and the joke is always how fast that prediction collapsed, from a 512MB flash drive to a 20GB hard drive nobody thought could be filled. A few commenters add the flip side, that old thumb drives and floppies don't reliably survive the decades the way capacity numbers grew.

What readers reported: My uncle built me a computer when I was 12 or so, my mom splurged and got a 20gb hard drive... there's no way I'd ever fill it up in my life.

Limit: I myself have had major corruption issues with usb drivers as early as 3-5 years later.

Why it lost its value: The piano thread turns out to be about the gap between physical mass and market value: movers deadlift a 500-pound upright like it's nothing, yet several commenters describe giving pianos away free or watching one sit unclaimed on Marketplace for a year. Named instruments like a Bechstein are the exception, where the moving cost is treated as obviously worth it rather than a burden.

What readers reported: The two guys, legs thick as tree trunks, shrugged and then deadlifted and walked this thing to the truck... I was very impressed and tipped them well.

Limit: The tuning pegs fit into holes in a wooden backboard, and after a while this joint is no longer able to hold tightly... the whole piano becomes junk in pretty short order.

Why it lost its value: Car CD changer stories mostly track mechanical failure: discs get trapped behind broken eject mechanisms for years, and commenters trade fixes like sliding a thin metal ruler under the cartridge to force a release. At least one person turned the accident into a habit, saying the one album stuck in his car for a decade made long drives 'wash over him in a nice way.'

What readers reported: He did love Enya for hour plus drives. Said it made the time go faster because the songs are long and flowed into each other. The drive would kind of wash over him in a nice way.

Limit: Our tried and true tool for stuck changer cartridges was a thin metal ruler... then you had to use a tiny screwdriver to massage it back over into the cartridge.

Why it lost its value: Fans of the i830 zero in on two concrete specs, a battery that held a charge for up to three days and instant push-to-talk, with people still comparing the chirp favorably to how sluggish modern group texts feel. The tradeoff shows up just as clearly in the same thread, where one commenter says the walkie-talkie channel became unusable after 7pm once enough classmates in the area had one.

What readers reported: It was great for its walkie-talkie and group messaging functions, had amazing voice clarity... Held a charge for up to 3 days on the extended battery.

Limit: The chirp chirp was ubiquitous my junior and senior year of high school... the network was unusable starting at 7pm every night.

Why it lost its value: Getting a personal phone line reads like a rite of passage rather than a technology upgrade, a birthday gift, a status symbol, or leverage in a sibling standoff over a shared line, but the payoff was often anticlimactic. One practical upside does surface: a second line meant no longer getting bumped off AOL every time a friend called the house number.

What readers reported: Father was a realtor at the time so we had the second phone line AND it was in the same room as the computer. No more getting kicked off AOL whenever a friend called our houseline!

Limit: I gave all my friends at school my new phone number. Not a single person ever called.

Why it lost its value: This catch-all entry collects wildly different definitions of loss: for some commenters it's convergence, a single device finally replacing the Palm Pilot, MP3 player, and USB drive they used to carry separately, while for others the complaint runs the opposite direction, that the phone became a 24-hour obligation rather than a luxury item at all.

What readers reported: I remember having a Palm Pilot, cell phone, MP3 player, and usb drive, thinking why can not this all one device? Then iPhones came out a couple years later.

Limit: Now (IMO) they're a burden, expected to be available 24 hours a day and the vast majority of people use them to look at churned out trash.

Why it lost its value: 3D printer commenters chart a steep price collapse in real time: a $50,000 industrial machine in 2005 gave way to consumer kits, and now a few-hundred-dollar Bambu runs unattended for weeks with barely a failed print. People who lived through the Reprap and early Makerbot era describe those machines as barely functional by comparison, not merely expensive.

What readers reported: I've been running it non stop for 4 weeks straight and it has only failed one print.

Limit: The post-production takes a lot of work and is not consumer friendly if you don't prepare yourself.

Why it lost its value: G5 comments aren't really about using the computer anymore, they're about what happens to the shell afterward, from becoming glass-top coffee table legs to just sitting around because someone wants to repurpose the case. A related reply about a 2010 Mac Pro still running modern macOS suggests the tower design outlasted the G5's own software life, heat and power draw aside.

What readers reported: I have seen glass top coffee tables advertised using two as the legs.

Limit: Only issue is power consumption and heat generation. Not bad for a 15 year old computer!

Why it lost its value: Most answers under this entry are bare namechecks, but the one commenter who elaborates compresses the entire category's arc into a single line, a wireless handset that was cool one day and worthless the next, once cell phones made a phone tethered to a landline base redundant.

Limit: I was gonna say a Wireless phone handset, that shit was so cool, and then over night was worthless.

Why it lost its value: Car phone comments circle back to cost and status: installation reportedly ran 'BIG bucks' and the finished setup, hardwired into the trunk with a handset near the transmission tunnel, was a serious status symbol. One mechanic's aside is the best proof of how permanent the wiring was, a roadside call box's circuit board matched the innards of a first-generation trunk module.

What readers reported: Those cost BIG bucks to get installed and were quite a status symbol in their day.

Limit: At my auto shop we'd find hard mounted components blocking access to things needing repair.

Why it lost its value: Only two comments cover this item, and together they read as home entertainment staged for an audience rather than solitary listening: a 200-disc changer folded into a modular system, and a dad who cued up the Top Gun opening on his new rear-projection television and laserdisc rig for every first-time guest.

What readers reported: I had a 200 disc changer in my modular home entertainment system.

Why it lost its value: Both replies here are plain affirmations of attachment with almost no use-case detail, one names the Series 5, the other adds the Series 3, and that brevity itself says something about how fondly these handhelds are remembered relative to how little anyone explains about actually using them.

What readers reported: Yes! I loved mine. Also my Psion Series 3.

Why it lost its value: The single comment attached to this item isn't an anecdote at all, it just puts the word 'cleaners' in scare quotes, which reads as quiet skepticism about whether these devices ever did what they claimed rather than fondness for having owned one.

Limit: Ionizer air "cleaners" (the scare quotes are the entire comment, and the only editorial content on record).

Why it lost its value: The one account here is unusually specific for how thin the record is: an inherited 1889 Bechstein boudoir grand needed eight people and a sizable moving fee to relocate, and the commenter treats that expense as self-evidently justified rather than as a complaint worth making.

What readers reported: It's a Bechstein boudoir grand from 1889 so absolutely worth it.

Limit: Took 8 people and a pretty big moving fee to get it to my house.

Why it lost its value: This entry comes down to one sentence that's really about sunk cost rather than continued use: the commenter keeps the Bose system specifically because of what it cost twenty years ago, not because of anything it still does especially well today.

What readers reported: I cant get rid of bc of it was 1k 20 years ago.

Why it lost its value: The single detailed anecdote here is a first-purchase origin story: saving high school earnings plus a parental contribution for an $800 TRS-80, about $5,200 today, and possibly being the only home computer within five square miles of South Florida at the time it was bought.

What readers reported: I was the first sale in that store and the manager came out and completed the sale... he might have been the only one in a 5 square mile area of South Florida who had one in their home.

Limit: Before disk drives, it used a cassette tape recorder to store data.

Why it lost its value: Owners describe these as expensive when new and nearly impossible to get rid of later: several mention hauling one apart just to move it, and dumps or haulers refusing tube sets loaded with lead. A few holdouts still insist a well-tuned unit beats a budget LCD, but nobody disputes the bulk.

What readers reported: A good, well-tuned rptv is far better quality than modern lcds

Limit: It was unbelievably heavy. Why were they so heavy?

Why it lost its value: Several people say the same Panasonic or Pioneer plasma they bought for thousands in the mid-2000s is still running in a bedroom or basement today, with more than one joking that the set doubles as a space heater. The recurring complaint isn't age, it's screen burn-in from static logos.

What readers reported: Plasma TV's - at least the last gen Panasonics and Pioneers - produce incredible cinematic imagery that is difficult to replicate.

Limit: I noticed it while it was still image retention and not burn-in.

Why it lost its value: The armoire itself splits opinion more than the television that used to sit inside it: some say nobody wants these cabinets anymore because modern TVs are thin enough to wall-mount, while others have repurposed theirs for board games, tools, or china nobody uses but can't part with.

What readers reported: I have a granny-fancy china cabinet in my dining room, it's full of board games and it's amazing.

Limit: I'm stuck with a max size of 35" for a TV because that's all that will fit in it.

Why it lost its value: For parents this reads as road-trip logistics rather than luxury: multiple commenters say it kept a toddler quiet on long drives or camping trips, and more than one wishes a modern tablet-and-headrest setup worked half as well. A couple of others push back that a book did the job just fine.

What readers reported: My kid just turned 3 and I WISH I had one. All my family lives an hour or more from me and I wish we had an easy way to put on a movie for him instead of a tablet.

Limit: There were these miraculous things called books.

Why it lost its value: This one gets genuine disagreement: some say a dedicated rewinder measurably reduced wear on a VCR's mechanism, while others recall it as pure status among 'fancy friends' or a novelty shaped like a race car with no real function. Either way, it's remembered as a solved problem nobody strictly needed solved.

What readers reported: Rewinding was actually quite hard on a VCR. Depending on how you were using then a rewinder saved a lot on wear and tear.

Limit: Did it, though? Or did they just convince you they did?

Why it lost its value: The pushback here is specific and technical: commenters separate early digital cameras, which really were a quality downgrade from film, from older DSLRs, which several say still outperform a phone for dynamic range and a 'natural' look years after purchase. The tradeoff is convenience against getting pulled into buying more gear.

What readers reported: Even something 10-15 years old will produce photos that will amaze you vs. what your phone can capture.

Limit: you may get sucked in to the pursuit of even better quality, which will end up sucking all of the money from your wallet

Why it lost its value: The irony commenters keep landing on: these were dead weight nobody would take for free, with even charities turning them away over lead and disposal fees, and they're now sought out specifically by retro gamers for the input lag and component video that flat panels can't replicate.

What readers reported: vintage gamers go nuts for them now.... wish I'd kept mine

Limit: the CRT tubes themselves carry a huge electrical charge that can kill people and have to be discharged safely by somebody trained

Why it lost its value: Nostalgia here is aimed less at the machine itself than at what replaced it: former students and teachers describe the smart boards that came after as clunkier to run than flipping a transparency ever was, with one commenter dryly noting the real skill was timing it around lunch.

Limit: They're incredibly easy to use, it's just old teachers that can't keep up.

Why it lost its value: Nobody defends the 3D feature on its own merits, and several people just switched it off and kept using the television as an ordinary set for years afterward, which suggests the set outlasted the gimmick it was bought for.

What readers reported: We bought ours in 2013 and it's still going strong!

Limit: It makes the show about 3% mote visually interesting to look at but, that 3% is negated by those stupid glasses!

Why it lost its value: The device itself earns real loyalty: people cite the remote, commercial autoskip, and a 1.2x 'Quick mode' as reasons they're still running boxes bought back in 2000 or 2017, but at least one commenter says it became obsolete the moment an ordinary cable box added a record button.

What readers reported: the real killer is commercial autoskip and Quick mode (plays anything 1.2x speed), brilliant for catching up on sports

Limit: I was familiarizing myself with the remote and was like, what's this record button do? lol.

Why it lost its value: With only a handful of comments, the point made is narrow but consistent: the gun's aim-detection trick depends on a CRT's scanning beam, so once tube sets disappeared the accessory stopped working on a flat panel without a rigged-up fix.

What readers reported: it's hard to beat the simplicity of the old light guns

Limit: Need a CRT for the old light guns to work.

Why it lost its value: The four comments about this set all converge on the same contradiction: a genuinely sharp, HDMI-capable picture bolted into a nearly 300-pound curved-sided cabinet that Sony apparently never gave a single handhold to lift by.

What readers reported: a friggin' enormous cathode-tube set that still worked with modern equipment. Gaming was glorious.

Limit: moving it was utter hell, because of course SONY televisions had to have curved sides with no hand holds or places to grip

Why it lost its value: The three surviving comments describe a boombox-sized unit that nonetheless kept working decades after it was last touched, framed less as nostalgia for the camcorder and more as a rebuke aimed at today's flimsier gadgets.

What readers reported: These things were shockingly well made, complex and rugged. The UI's were lightning fast and intuitive.

Limit: Boombox-sized Panasonic SVHS Digital Camcorder.

Why it lost its value: Only two comments exist here, but both describe a set that simply refused to die: one owner let movers drop it and walk off without complaint because he already felt he owed them more than it was worth, the other kept theirs running long after a same-household Mitsubishi had failed.

What readers reported: a Samsung that would absolutely not die

Limit: my movers dropped it then ran away. I was fine with that because I owed them more than the TV was worth

Why it lost its value: Just one line survives for this item, but it's a telling one: three decades on, the dish is still bolted to the yard, offered less as praise for satellite service than as a shrug that some installations simply outlast their usefulness.

What readers reported: Satellite dish in the yard. (30 years, but still.)

Why it lost its value: The single comment on record makes an odd but genuine case for the format: the owner still loves a 2002 DLP projector specifically for the mechanical novelty of a chip full of tiny mirrors, despite admitting the fan noise is closer to a hard drive than a home theater.

What readers reported: knowing it's a bunch of tiny mirrors on a chip making an image is glorious

Limit: It's not the best and sounds like a hard drive

Why it lost its value: The lone comment mentioning this set pairs it with a Samsung as a durability contrast, and the Mitsubishi comes off worse in the comparison, singled out as the one next to a same-household set that wouldn't quit.

Limit: a Mitsubishi that only lasted like 5 years

Why it lost its value: Commenters describe an oddly durable attachment to these chairs, with many still owning the same one from the 90s or 2000s, but the affection has quietly shifted from human seating to a napping spot claimed by cats and dogs, and several recall the wicker rim fraying, the frame tipping over, or simply outgrowing it as adults.

What readers reported: It is the Rolls-Royce of cat beds.

Limit: Many still have a scar on their thigh from being impaled by a wicker needle from a frayed rim.

Why it lost its value: Ex-salespeople and long-time owners agree on one thing, that the machine itself is a genuine tank that keeps running for decades, but what people actually remember most is the door-to-door pressure and quasi-cult sales training, plus a weight that becomes a real problem once the original owner reaches their seventies.

What readers reported: Kirby's are built like Panzer Tanks and lasted for years (as long as you regularly changed the bags, belts, etc).

Limit: We couldn't get them to leave for 2.5 hours, grinding us down until we agreed on a price.

Why it lost its value: This thread reads more like a fact-check than a memory, with skeptics running the 1990 math against home prices and truck costs to question the $42,000 figure, while the original commenter confirms it was real, a stockbroker father's status purchase, and adds that the table itself was, in his own words, disappointingly plain.

What readers reported: Its nice, but far from impressive. Its just a simple design.

Limit: If that much money had been put into the S&P500 it'd be worth an insane amount today.

Why it lost its value: Former owners keep reporting the same thing decades apart: nightstands, credenzas, sleigh beds, and memory boxes that have held up remarkably well, though a running side debate in the comments questions whether a mall furniture chain ever counted as real luxury to begin with.

What readers reported: I'm sitting here surrounded by 3 pieces of furniture from Bombay. They're still rock solid.

Limit: But was it ever really considered a luxury item or were the people who shopped there just rubes?

Why it lost its value: The Rainbow barely gets more than a passing mention here, but the shape of the story matches its rival Kirby: what sticks in memory is the sales pitch itself, and households split evenly between still owning the machine and having just gotten rid of it.

Why it lost its value: Only two comments survive on this one, and they land on opposite ends of the same wish: a teenager who could only afford a single lamp instead of the full glowing bedroom setup, and an adult still turning up more of them at garage sales decades later.

What readers reported: It's never too late for more Lava Lamps. Found two at garage sales last summer.

Limit: Only saved enough for one lava lamp in the end.

Why it lost its value: Neither surviving comment describes actual ownership: one is a flat admission of still wanting the chair today, the other recalls testing the mall's calf massager after a hard practice and dreaming of pairing it with a Tempur-Pedic, a wish list the commenter admits never got fulfilled.

What readers reported: I loved sitting in the test calf massager the day after an intense practice or timed mile.

Limit: I have neither and my body could really use both these days.

Why it lost its value: The single comment on record is blunt about where the real cost showed up, not in the thousands spent at purchase, but in the physical ordeal of hauling the thing out of the basement afterward.

Limit: Thousands of dollars, but it was a bitch to move out of the basement.

Why it lost its value: Employers bought these by the box in the early 2000s, but several commenters admit the novelty wore off within a week for everyone except the sales team, while a smaller group ran an entire small business, a 15-page college paper, or years of Outlook calendar syncing through one.

What readers reported: Being able to run excel on a handheld was a game changer.

Limit: The novelty wore off after about a week and pretty much everyone except the sales guys stopped using them.

Why it lost its value: Commenters remember this as a status-defining $500 phone precisely for its colorways — the gold Dolce & Gabbana edition, the pink Maria Sharapova model — and several say the tactile keyboard bumps let them T9 text without looking, though at least one calls it the worst phone he ever owned.

What readers reported: That was the last great feature phone imo. With the bumps on the keyboard to guide you it was possible to t9 text while driving without looking at the phone at all.

Limit: Worst phone I ever had, from '94 to now. I can't understand how Motorola lost the plot so badly. Went back to the Cingular store and paid cash for an HTC WinMo phone with a slideout keyboard.

Why it lost its value: Unlike almost everything else in this list, hospital and ER workers say the device never actually went obsolete — one calls it a daily tool, another says entire industries still depend on it, even while wishing they could throw theirs against a wall.

What readers reported: Beepers have never gone away. There are entire industries that still rely on them.

Limit: As a guy who works in the ER I'd love to throw mine against the wall...

Why it lost its value: The appeal here reads as pure teenage social currency — texting under a desk with eyes closed, resenting parents who wouldn't buy one — though one reply insists a $199 device was never really a luxury to begin with.

What readers reported: I could text on that thing under the table in class with my eyes closed. Loved my sidekick

Limit: they were $199 not a luxury

Why it lost its value: WebOS loyalists single out specific features — wireless charging, gesture controls, and a call-screening trick where you could listen to a voicemail live and pick up mid-message — and mourn that HP bought the platform and ran it into the ground rather than faulting the hardware itself.

What readers reported: Didn't recognize a number? Send it to voice mail and listen in while they leave a message. If it was important, you could answer the phone while they were leaving the message.

Limit: HP bought them and ran it to the ground.

Why it lost its value: Several commenters frame this as the moment the standalone PalmPilot line quietly ended, with one noting it was down to a single unsold model by 2005 as Palm shifted focus here, while multiple people say they preferred its physical keyboard to any touchscreen that followed.

What readers reported: I still miss mine. Was my favorite phone ever. Much preferred the keyboard on my Treo to typing on the stupid screen.

Why it lost its value: This is the rare entry where the 'former' in former luxury doesn't quite hold: multiple replies say they still use theirs daily decades later, and one describes an active planner community where vintage crocodile-skin editions still sell well.

What readers reported: Nope-still use mine daily and it’s 20+. Thanks for the reminder to order my 2026 refills

Limit: Still have one — some day I'll manually transfer all the contacts to my phone.

Why it lost its value: Reactions to the plain Handspring split cleanly in two: people who ran an entire freelance or babysitting schedule on one, and people who admit real excitement gave way to barely opening the thing after the first week.

What readers reported: I kept up to date on my babysitting jobs! I had a Handspring and really actually loved it.

Limit: Handspring for me, ran PalmOS. Was so excited to get one, then barely used it.

Why it lost its value: Fans of the Visor specifically focus on tactile details — writing backwards R's for its Graffiti quirk, syncing calendars weekly with a spouse, donating a still-working unit to a local museum — rather than general PDA nostalgia.

What readers reported: I have a Handspring Visor that still works!

Why it lost its value: Two commenters independently describe reading full novels on this model's black-and-white screen years before Kindle existed, treating it as an e-reader first and an organizer second.

What readers reported: I was reading books on my black-and-white Palm V years before Kindle and it was great.

Why it lost its value: This one barely registers beyond secondhand memory: both supporting comments describe someone else's Newton rather than personal ownership, closer to hearsay than a firsthand account.

Why it lost its value: The best detail here is a specific infrared hack — pointing a Palm at this Nokia's port to dial into an ISP for free unlimited weekend internet by a hotel pool — a workaround years before smartphones made it moot.

What readers reported: you could point the palm at the nokia and get it to do a dial up internet connection

Why it lost its value: Both replies describe the Centro by comparison rather than on its own terms — one to an iPhone's feel in the hand, another by tracing its lineage forward to the Pre.

What readers reported: It felt nice in the hand compared to my iPhone.

Why it lost its value: The memory that sticks to this specific model is an infrared 'beam' trick between two units, which one commenter calls an early, unnamed version of AirDrop and lists among their favorite features of anything they've owned.

What readers reported: You just unlocked a memory! You could airdrop stuff to other Palm Pilots by pointing the infrared to another device.

Why it lost its value: One long-time owner used this exact model as a dedicated e-reader for nearly five years and loved how futuristic it felt, though he also needed three separate reader apps and a bulky memory card just to cover competing file formats.

What readers reported: I loved mine so much. It felt very futuristic and sleek. I liked writing with the substantial stylus.

Limit: The only issue was it only had 8MB of ram for storage and I needed something like three ereader apps because there were several formats.

Why it lost its value: The only trace of this one is a sardonic aside — 'Franklin Planner system...' trailing into a wink emoji — that reads more like an inside joke about the system's reputation than an account of using it.

Why it lost its value: Buying into Windows Mobile here reads as a deliberate anti-Palm statement — the commenter says outright he wanted this specifically to 'be different' — rather than any real claim about the hardware's usefulness.

What readers reported: I had the Dell Pocket PC, because I had to be different. Windows Mobile was interesting back then.

Why it lost its value: There's retrospective irony in the only story attached to this one: fiddling with it and wishing someone would just add a phone, unaware that wish was about to be granted and would help erase devices exactly like it.

What readers reported: I remember fiddling with my Zire 72, thinking that if only they put a phone on this thing, it would be perfect.

Why it lost its value: A professor reportedly stopped an entire class just to ask about the foldout keyboard on this model — the reaction it provoked is the whole anecdote here, not the specs.

What readers reported: I'll raise you a Dell Axim with a foldout keyboard. My professor literally stopped class to ask me about it.

Why it lost its value: This model shows up as a single line inside what reads like a roll-call thread of people naming their old devices, with no further detail on how it was used or why it stuck.

Why it lost its value: The commenter's own account undercuts any luxury framing: a graduation gift used maybe four times freshman year, then sold to a friend years later for about $50, which they note was probably more than it was worth.

Limit: I probably took it to class and used it four times my freshman year of college and then sold it to a friend years later for like $50, which is probably more than it was worth.

Why it lost its value: Phone and Palm organizer fold into one device in the single comment here, which calls it good specifically 'for early 2000s,' a qualifier doing a lot of quiet work in that sentence.

What readers reported: I had the Kyocera mobile phone/palm pilot. It was so good (for early 2000s)

Why it lost its value: A Navy Ensign recalls being issued one for Surface Warfare school with the stated goal of sharing daily plans between officers, though he admits most of his cohort just used it to play a game called Drug Wars.

What readers reported: The idea was that we could put all our daily plans on it, share them, etc. Some Officers even bought the belt holder for it.

Limit: Most of us just played a game called "Drug Wars," though.

Why it lost its value: A long-time Palm loyalist who followed the platform through its Handspring merger and even joined its developer program says a first-generation iPhone rendering an actual webpage was enough to make him abandon this device on the spot.

Limit: I was using a Treo 600 when I saw my first iPhone and the latter’s ability to accurately render web pages made me switch immediately.

Why it lost its value: The detail that sticks for this model isn't software or business use — it's a physical design flourish, a slide mechanism revealing the stylus compartment, singled out as the coolest thing in the whole Palm lineup.

What readers reported: Coolest one was the Tungsten that would slide open to reveal the stylus area.

Why it lost its value: Self-image is the whole story for this comment: owning it in college made the commenter feel like an actual working professional.

What readers reported: I bought a palm tx when I was in college and felt like i was a professional!

Why it lost its value: These generic players earned loyalty less for polish than for pure function: several commenters describe buying or gifting one specifically because it plugs in like a plain thumb drive with no iTunes required, or because it can't go online — handy for a kid whose phone gets confiscated, or a jogger who just wants music without a subscription.

What readers reported: You just plugged it in and managed the music like it was on a jump drive.

Limit: Durability was hit or miss — one owner says theirs lasted more than a decade before its cheap internal memory finally died.

Why it lost its value: Apple's take on the same idea carried a real brand premium — commenters remember paying $200-400, serious money for a teenager at the time — and it now sustains an active repair culture where owners swap the spinning hard drive for an SD card and a fresh battery to keep decades-old Classics and Minis running as dedicated, notification-free players.

What readers reported: iPod Minis are surprisingly still pretty useful as a simple music player. You can get a new battery very cheaply, they're not that hard to take apart.

Limit: Not every generation survives the process — Nanos are widely written off as e-waste in these comments because their batteries can't be swapped the way a Classic's or Mini's can.

Why it lost its value: Thumb drives are the category's clearest before-and-after: commenters remember paying $60-95 for drives measured in single-digit megabytes, and cloud storage has since made most of that old capacity anxiety moot — yet several still carry a decade-old 1GB or 2GB drive on a keychain purely as an offline backup that doesn't depend on a connection.

What readers reported: I have a 15 year old 1 GB thumbdrive on my keychain that I use at least once a month, usually as a back up when I'm giving presentations off site.

Limit: The format's fragility could get expensive fast — one commenter lost an entire group project when the only drive was left behind in a school computer.

Why it lost its value: A dedicated Garmin often cost around $400 and became a "door stop" within about a year of smartphones getting GPS, several commenters admit. But the units still in daily use are kept for exactly the cases a phone handles badly: no cell signal in Iceland, the backcountry, or remote job sites.

What readers reported: I would have been lost at Kirkjufell mountain if I didn't have my Garmin GPS.

Limit: The sunk cost is a running joke in the thread — one owner calls their unused unit "a $400 Garmin door stop."

Why it lost its value: What people actually remember about TomTom isn't the routing — several call it out for bad directions and confusing detours — it's the celebrity voice packs, from John Cleese and Snoop Dogg to a Homer Simpson pack that called out donut shops, which is what made the device worth the money for some owners.

What readers reported: I had Snoop Dogg, it was hilarious

Limit: The routing itself drew real complaints — one owner says it became a running joke for sending them on obviously wrong turns.

Why it lost its value: Zune owners in this thread are unusually loyal decades later, insisting the screen, album art display, and subscription model were genuinely better than the iPod's and that Apple simply out-marketed Microsoft — one person still has a Zune tattoo, another says theirs was stolen from a car and they still miss it.

What readers reported: The screen clarity was amazing. It was a much better product than the iPod.

Limit: The hardware didn't age gracefully — more than one commenter says their unit now won't hold a charge and shuts off as soon as it's unplugged.

Why it lost its value: CD burners now survive almost entirely in one professional niche: multiple commenters note hospitals still hand patients a CD of their scans, even though most modern laptops no longer have a drive to read them, leaving patients stuck between eras in the waiting room.

What readers reported: Fun fact, we still use CD burners in the medical field. You'd think there would be a better way by now.

Limit: Outside medicine the format is dead weight — one commenter says a recycler only accepted their ten-port CD/DVD duplicator for scrap, not resale.

Why it lost its value: One commenter's iPod-dock stereo carries more emotional weight than technical value — it was the last gift their father bought before he died in 2007, still stored in the basement because they can't bring themselves to throw it out — while others recall the dorm-room status of brands like Aiwa, with built-in cassette decks and bouncing EQ displays.

What readers reported: Aiwa was king of the dorms.

Limit: Reviving one today takes a workaround — commenters suggest a Bluetooth AUX adapter or hunting down a still-working iPod, since the original dock connector matches nothing modern.

Why it lost its value: Only two comments survive for the Zip drive, and neither elaborates much beyond calling it "a revolution at the time" for offering 100MB of removable storage — thin evidence, but consistent with a device that got leapfrogged before most people accumulated a story about it.

What readers reported: The iOmega zip drives with 100mb removable disks.

Why it lost its value: A single 64MB PS2 card is effectively the whole case for this entry: one commenter says it held saves for over 100 games without ever running out of room, decades before storage anxiety became a normal part of owning a game console.

What readers reported: I have over 100 PS2 games and I having a save slot was never an issue. There's still plenty of space on that thing and I'll never fill it up.

Why it lost its value: One commenter's £190 memory stick — bought in 2006 for a PSP after weeks of saving weekend-job pay — captures how steep proprietary Sony storage was, and how much status came with carrying a couple gigabytes of TV shows and movies everywhere in college.

What readers reported: man was I cool in college! I had so many tv shows and movies on me at all times

Why it lost its value: Commenters frame the medallion's collapse as a family story more than an abstract stat: fathers who sold theirs for $500K+ near the peak, or held on too long as ride-hail apps gutted the street-hail licensing system and drove Boston prices from $700,000 down to under $10,000. The thread splits hard between people who see Uber as curing a corrupt, artificially capped monopoly and others who insist taxis were unfairly maligned and drivers were the real casualties.

What readers reported: Boston medallion price around the early 2000's was $700,000. Now they are about $10,000 or less.

Limit: Debt from buying or leasing a medallion was severe enough that one commenter says people in that position committed suicide, and others describe drivers pushed into predatory loans just to lease or afford one.

Why it lost its value: Pushback dominates this thread: multiple owners insist the ceiling speakers and wiring from 20 years ago still sound great and only the amplifier end needs updating, including one who traced snipped wiring through a whole house and revived eight zones with a cheap secondhand amp and a headless music server. Others disagree just as bluntly, calling the built-in speakers they inherited garbage worth ripping out during a remodel.

What readers reported: Whole home systems are still awesome. My house has them and all you do is connect and an old amp (cheap these days) and use a Bluetooth receiver and bam, you have an entire home Bluetooth speaker. Definitely not worthless whatsoever.

Limit: A former home theater installer describes these systems as a recurring headache: houses left with orphaned speaker wiring after a prior owner stripped out the amp, wired inconsistently by electricians who barely understood audio.

Why it lost its value: What people remember most isn't the feature but the price tag and status attached to it: a landline add-on billed monthly, delivered as a separate box you plugged in between the phone and the wall, and used by kids as an informal marker of whose family had money. The irony commenters keep landing on is that the same 'who's calling' function is now free and automatic on every phone, but mostly useful for flagging the call as Scam Likely rather than identifying a friend.

What readers reported: Wild how people used to pay extra just to know who was calling

Limit: The feature itself is useless with every caller being ID'd as Scam Likely.

Why it lost its value: Enron reads less like a lost luxury and more like a family cautionary tale still sitting in a drawer: one commenter found a great uncle's paperwork for $25,000 in stock now worth about $10, while another holds onto two worthless certificates as a running joke about someday being rich. The gallows humor extends to Arthur Andersen shredding jokes from people who actually worked there when the firm collapsed alongside Enron, and at least one reader pushed back on the premise, asking how a stock holding belongs on a list of former luxuries.

Limit: At least one commenter directly questioned the premise of including it here, asking how a stock holding counts as a former luxury item at all.

Why it lost its value: Popping off the faceplate was supposed to make an in-dash CD player theft-proof, but commenters recall the whole unit getting stolen anyway, or a forgotten faceplate disappearing off a porch railing overnight.

What readers reported: Some used to be very nice and it was kind of a status symbol combined with a nice sound system.

Limit: That was the promise however some thief's took mine anyways. I had the face, they still had the stereo.

Why it lost its value: One driver still runs a factory navigation system daily and insists it's far from obsolete, while another dismisses a newer factory unit as garbage next to a phone plugged into CarPlay, showing built-in nav lost to a cheaper rival rather than simply aging out.

What readers reported: A lot of these are not obsolete at all. My 25 vehicle has built in NAV and I use it daily.

Limit: The built in Nav is obsolete in that anybody with CarPlay can plug in and use a better Nav.

Why it lost its value: Owners swap stories of these diesels shrugging off 200,000-plus miles while barely accelerating up a hill, and one adds the honest counterpoint that a well-used example still leaked, rusted, and lost its AC along the way.

What readers reported: A 200k old Mercedes diesel engine can easily do 200k more.

Limit: Interior was complete but shoddy, it leaked, was starting to rust in the body, AC didn't work. Mechanically it was fine, but it was not a great driving experience.

Why it lost its value: Several commenters trade the same math: a once-$170,000 V12 now sells for a fraction of that, but the upkeep on the cheap used luxury car can burn through the savings within a year or two.

What readers reported: I'll take a 2015 BMW X5 over the 2026 Honda Pilot..sorry but it's just a better car and screens are actually...cheap...

Limit: that once $170,000 V12 Mercedes is now $12,000, but it'll also cost you $12,000 a year in maintenance.

Why it lost its value: A work truck was still running an 8-track in 1996, well after the format had disappeared from dealer lots, and the format's lone champion here credits garage-sale tape bins with shaping his taste in classic rock.

What readers reported: I bought 8 tracks at garage sales as a 17 year old. Became a big Credence Clearwater Revival, The Doors, The Beach Boys, Three Dog Night, Skynyrd, Steve Miller, and Bob Seger fan.

Why it lost its value: A mobile phone dealership moved installed Bluetooth kits by the hundreds in 2005 at what would be roughly $1,000 today, a price the commenter contrasts with the twenty-dollar FM transmitter adapter that now does the same job just as well.

What readers reported: I worked in a mobile phone dealership in 2005 and the number of these we sold was pretty significant. 400 AUD plus around 160 installation.

Limit: The twenty dollar adapters that broadcast your phone audio onto an unused FM radio band (very short range) perform the same job better, and cost twenty bucks.