Love those watches. These days you’ll hear people refer to an object as an heirloom, like an heirloom couch, which is typically an expensive object that has potential to be an actual heirloom. By definition, for an object to be an heirloom it has to be passed down through generations, but I like the use of it to refer to an object’s quality, which correlates to its potential to be passed down. Only then, when you talk about potential heirloom status does value enter the conversation. And I think that’s just because well-made things are typically expensive, especially these days. So value is only relevant given the correlation with quality. Nonetheless, I’d love to purchase an heirloom watch that one day becomes an heirloom.
vintermann|2 years ago
Some relatives apparently gave my father a silver spoon, with great ceremony and seriousness, because he was the last carrier of our last name. It was not a very pretty spoon, and it was more than a little odd, since I've since done some genealogy research and found out that we have plenty of relatives with that last name (admittedly they mostly converged on a slightly different spelling, our common ancestor living before that sort of thing was standardized).
There are so many things I would have more loved to have from those ancestors than a spoon.
From another ancestor, we have a chest, an "America suitcase". This ancestor, my great-great grandmother, was supposed to go to America with her parents, but they changed their mind at the last moment and went to Northern Norway instead. It's dented and worn, and it probably wasn't a very nice chest in the first place, since they were poor. But I think it's a much better heirloom - it is something signifying a very important crossroads in my family's history, and it even documents it to some degree (there's a year and initials painted on it).
kilbuz|2 years ago