What’s one thing you own that holds deep sentimental value?
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Everything we own has a price, except the things we would never sell. What if your most valuable possession is the one no buyer would ever want?
Today’s prompt asks for one thing I own that holds deep sentimental value. I have such a thing. I will not tell you what it is, and by the end I hope the reason will be clear.
1. Its value is invisible to everyone but me.
Put it on an auction table and no one would raise a hand. A dealer would glance at it and move on. Yet if my house were on fire, it is among the first things I would reach for. That gap between what the world would pay and what I would risk is the whole meaning of sentimental value. It is the only kind of worth that vanishes the moment it leaves its owner’s hands.
2. Naming it would invite the wrong question.
If I told you what it is, you would quietly do what all of us do: estimate. Is it old? Is it rare? What is it made of? These are fair questions about most possessions and entirely wrong ones about this one. The Roman jurists saw the problem long ago. A passage attributed to Paul in Justinian’s Digest holds that things are valued by common estimation, not by the affection of individuals.[1] The law must use a measure that can be shared; the heart has no such scale.
3. A treasure taken to market is always misread.
Tamil literature has an entire epic built around one object. In the Silappatikaram,[2] Kannagi gives one of her anklets to her husband Kovalan so they can rebuild a ruined life in Madurai. He takes it to be sold. A dishonest goldsmith, who had himself stolen the queen’s anklet, accuses Kovalan of the theft, and the king has him executed without inquiry. Kannagi storms into the royal court and breaks her remaining anklet open. Rubies spill out; the queen’s had held pearls. The truth had been inside the object all along. The market simply could not see it.
4. I do not really own it. It holds something of mine.
Ownership is an odd word here. I can sell my car, lend my books, give away my shirts. This one thing I could not part with without losing something that is not the thing at all: a person, a season of life, a lesson that arrived with it. In that sense, possession runs the other way. It keeps hold of a part of me I might otherwise forget.
5. Such objects are meant to be passed on, not hoarded.
When Elijah was taken up, his mantle fell, and Elisha picked it up and carried it to the banks of the Jordan (2 Kings 2:13–14). Its worth lay in who had worn it and in what it now asked of the one who wore it next.
In Japan, the practice known as katami-wake[3] offers a quieter parallel. After a death, often in connection with the memorial held on the forty-ninth day, the departed person’s belongings are given to relatives, and sometimes to close friends, as keepsakes. To me, this suggests that memory is meant to be carried forward by many hands rather than locked away.
These are two very different traditions with one conviction: a sentimental object is less a possession than a trust.
6. A fair objection: things can trap us.
There is a real danger here. Objects can become shrines to a past we refuse to leave. Some homes are crowded with keepsakes that comfort no one and burden everyone. The people who gave us these things would almost certainly rather be remembered in how we live than in what we keep in a drawer. The objection is right, and it is exactly why a keepsake must never be confused with the relationship it points to. The object is a doorway, not the room.
7. So what is it worth?
The honest answer is almost nothing, and that is why it is priceless. Its value was never in the material. It was borrowed from the people and the moments it carries. My task is not to guard it from the world but to live up to what it remembers. One day, like the mantle and the keepsake, it should pass into hands that will understand.
What do you own that no buyer would want, and whose story is kept inside it?
Notes for readers
[1] Digest of Justinian 35.2.63. The Digest is a sixth-century compilation of Roman legal writing; this passage is attributed to the jurist Julius Paulus.
[2] Silappatikaram (“The Tale of the Anklet”) is one of the five great epics of Tamil literature, attributed to the poet Ilango Adigal. Kannagi remains one of the most revered figures in Tamil culture.
[3] Katami-wake is the Japanese practice of distributing a deceased person’s belongings as keepsakes (katami), mainly among relatives and sometimes close friends. The distribution may take place in connection with the forty-ninth-day memorial, although practices vary. See the TKG Japanese-English Learner’s Dictionary, “形見 (かたみ),” and the iタウンページ guide to the forty-ninth-day memorial. Scholarly research on mortuary customs in the Ryukyu Islands provides additional regional context.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 29 October 2026: What’s one thing you own that holds deep sentimental value?
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