Every item has a story attached. Like a badge from when I spent two weeks at a certain factory in Fremont or a calculator from the 1970s when my parents met in math class in university.
I have some carbon fiber rope used by a space elevator startup I kickstarted, prototype devices in the development of the Kinect or 360 Camera (mounted in a Tupperware box with the camera poking through a carved out hole, no less), a Benham's Wheel and Euler's disk, and lots of Halo ephemera collected over the years (like an extremely rare Halo-3 branded gum handed out at PAX early in Bungie's life), a Dragon Illusion by James Dean, and Xbox 360 processor chip, a copy of and a lot of knick nacks with personal stories. :)
Then people started gifting me things like a cherished slide rules and the like. I love my wunderkammer!
I absolutely love HN, what a small world. I worked on the 360 software and thru the Kinect days! I'd love to hear more about this space elevator, feel free to email me.
I totally know what you mean. I have a couple of boxes of stuff like this, where everything has a meaning. I try to cycle my shelf with the random things.
(I thought I was the only person who did this :) )
Dozens more.