I have an old Iraqi bill with Saddam Hussein's face on it. It's worth about 17 cents according to Google. -u/postsingularity

My grandfather went to the World Scout Jamboree in the Netherlands in 1937, and while he was there he traded patches and gear with some scouts from Germany. By 1937, the German boy scouts had transitioned into the Hitler youth, so I own a Hitler youth boy scout uniform with a bunch of swastikas on it.

-u/iamagainstit

A complete ivory and ebony chessboard bought a sale of confiscated poacher stuff to fund elephant preservation. When I lived in Zambia and was on holiday in Kenya.

My dad bought it and I got it as a hand-me-down. We were friends with someone who owned an animal sanctuary and their security had shot the poachers as far as I remember.

They had a parentless baby hippo as well. It stole my sister's chewing gum and tried eating their cat. It was moved further away from the main houses after it tipped over their landcruiser.

-u/xxrumlexx

When I was 18, I bought a print of a 1918 German zoo advertisement from a thrift store. I thought the artwork was neat. It had a leopard on it and I was completely cat-obsessed at the time. Turns out the artwork was by Ludwig Hohlwein. He would go on to produce Nazi propaganda.

-u/wolfmoral

I wanted a chinchilla really badly as a kid, but my parents said hell no. one Christmas my grandma got me a teddy bear made out of chinchilla fur.. Luckily my parents told me it didn't hurt the chinchilla it's just like getting a haircut for them, but they were like WTF to my grandma. I now know better and am also like WTF grandma

-u/lebrunjemz

My family owns a petrified walrus penis, my grandmother took it to get it identified at the Smithsonian several decades ago. Apparently, her grandfather or maybe it was her great-grandfather brought it home after he spent several years on some type of expedition up around northern Alaska and points north. It has been loaned out to several museums at different times. The family has talked about selling it but everyone has to agree and so far there is no agreement about selling it. So I own 1/67th of a petrified walrus penis.

-u/Robyn_withaY

An uncut DVD of Caligula. I am not sure if it is still banned or not.

-u/EnigmaCA

Kony 2012 Kit. It’s a whole thing and I don’t want to talk about it.

-u/XDXkenlee

An ornate, Boer tobacco jar from the 1800s. My great grandfather looted it off a dead militiaman during the Second Boer war.

-u/deathtotheminutemen

A first print edition of Batman Damned #1, the one featuring Batman's "little batman". (From DC Black Label featuring more adult content. Violence and swearing are totally fine, but a shadowy penis profile made people flip out enough they removed it from subsequent print runs)

-u/1nd1anaCroft

I have a glass vial/small bottle of pure histamine. If anyone would be exposed to this they would get a deadly allergic reaction. I have it double sealed.

-u/TheRealMonreal

I don’t think I have it anymore but back when I was in 9th grade and my brother was a senior we hosted a foreign exchange student from Norway. Without us knowing he had been taking pictures of every overweight/ obese American that he saw while he was here for the year.

It wasn’t until a year after he went home, on Christmas, he sent us a leather-bound photo album, like it looked really nice, opened it, and boom.. hundreds of photos of people from Walmart and malls.

My mom was not too impressed but me and my brother had a good chuckle, not even at the people but just the fact that he took all that time and energy to collect all those photos and then make them into a photo album.

-u/Toxicvenom_77

I have a few Ivory jewelry pieces from the early 70s my parents bought back from Botswana, and a poison arrow kit. Mum has the 3-meter long python skin she just put in her luggage from back then too.

-u/Icy_Hippo

My great-grandpa was a medic in WW2 and we own a little chest with his personal belongings, including his diary, some old bandages

And 3 vials of 1940s morphine

-u/i_wanted_memes

My 26.5” scale 8 string guitar is apparently super controversial to every guitarist I’ve ever shown it to.

-u/yokaishinigami

Umm mortuary toe tags from an asylum in New York ....like twenty or so of them ... I think they could be the only things left showing that these people actually lived

-u/ironviking13

Troll dolls were very big in the early '90s. I have a confederate soldier troll doll in full uniform with flag in hand. Thanks, Dad!

-u/JohnSterlingSanchez

An original copy of Mao’s Red Book from when they were distributed in China back in the 60s

Also a copy of Mein Kampf but I’m not sure about this copy’s backstory

-u/Themasterofcomedy209

5 grams of uranium metal, stored under oil in a glass vial.

-u/ScienceAndNonsense

I have my grandfather’s Hitler Youth knife. He was 12 when the war ended but he spent the last year or so of the war on a U-Boat basically as an assistant.

-u/Jon__Snuh

Not me, my parents growing up.

They had an actual elephant foot turned into a table.

Like an actual foot cut from an elephant and taxidermied made into an end table. Had a glass tabletop. You could feel the thin hairs on it. F*ckin haunted my dreams man.

-u/bobsux1234

I bought a used Bill Cosby comedy album on vinyl and the next week everything started coming out about the horrible things he had done ☹️

-u/alpal05144

A ceramic jar with “cocaine” written on it.

My father is a contractor and he got it from a client who was descended from a relatively prominent US President.

It was headed for the trash, my father didn’t steal it, of course.

-u/Apprehensive_Goal811

A packaged stick from Afghanistan that claims to cure all known illnesses, including cancer, if you rub it on you.

I traded an energy drink for it.

I think it’s pretty controversial since I now own the cure for all ailments.

-u/isnoe

As a joke, I told my mom I wanted my dog's testicles in a jar after we had him neutered…. She took it seriously and now I have had my dogs balls in a jar for almost a decade

-u/GhostBoy301