According To You: The Most Useless but Necessary Garage Trinket

There’s little doubt that we asked the Hagerty Community a pretty odd question last week, but we got more than we deserved back from you folks. Sometimes it’s these oddball questions that bring out the most creativity in our community, revealing the diversity in our collective lives.

When we experience something new, there’s a good chance a trinket will come along for the ride. It doesn’t have to be some item from a gift shop at a tourist trap; just about anything can turn into a garage trinket. After all, when you come across something interesting, why not put it in the garage?

Let’s see what you folks came up with!

Unusable car parts

@Dan: My display is a piston and rod from a John Deere two-cylinder that exploded at full throttle. It would have woke someone up on a hot day.

@Bruce: Hmmmm! For many years it was a headlamp busted off an IROC M1 in Monaco. Very aspirational souvenir, but sadly I’ve lost track of it.

Hilariously fake products

@audiobycarmine: How about a jar of Lucas’ Wiring Harness Replacement Smoke? Somebody actually created this.

Odd tools

@’02 Original Owner: More of a tool than a trinket, but for the life of me I’ve not been able to figure it out. This particular thing came with two boxes of tools I inherited from my father-in-law in 1967. He started wrench-twisting in the mid-1920s. It looks exactly like a valve spring compressor (like you’d use on a flathead engine) except it works backwards. Instead of compressing, it stretches.

I’ve shown it to a whole bunch of old-timers (older than I) over the years, and no one has been able to identify it. Still in my toolbox, though, awaiting an epiphany either from myself or someone else.

This is an interesting one! If you have photos, please email them to Sajeev at pistonslap@hagerty.com. —Ed.

License plates

@David: I’m the son of a military brat, so we moved quite a bit. I’m also a car guy, so I started collecting license plates to commemorate the places we lived. I still pick up an interesting one every now and then. I’ve got a bunch up on the wall of my garage.

@DUB6: All of my old (and collected/scrounged) plates were used to patch over knotholes in the siding of my barn. Maybe I should have bought a higher grade of lumber!

@David: License plates, of course, including NW Territories (Polar Bear) and Philippines (Pilipinas). Hey, Hagerty—how about an article on the Jeepneys of the Philippines?

@’02 Original Owner: I too have license plates. Growing up in Florida in the 1950s/60s, those plates used the first number or two to denote the county—all ’67. I spent nearly 30 years gradually accumulating one from each county, plus the outliers (Seminole Indian, National Guard, Consul, etc) to grace my garage wall. I also have a run of Amish buggy plates from Indiana, from all 10 Panamanian provinces, and other plates from foreign countries I’ve visited—all obtained legally, of course.

@Steve: My garage wall has a collection of dealer license-plate frames, mainly from Chevy dealers.

Pennants

@Barry: I had a collection of pennants on one wall (now in a toolbox drawer). I started collecting them when I was a kid traveling Canada and the Northern U.S. and still did it while we traveled with my kids. I tried to buy one from anywhere we stayed, but that got harder to do in the 1980s and onward. I took them down a couple of years ago as they were so dusty and faded. They were complimented with all the license plates from our cars back to 1973. Put them all in a drawer, as could not part with them as I should have.

Audio equipment

@TG: A pair of Electro-Voice DJ speakers from the ’90s that originated from a, well, gentleman’s club. They still smell like strawberries.

@Headturner: The radio. Actually, I use a Google Home speaker now. The right song can make a bad day better and a good day great.

Grab bag

@Clare: An old “Rhodesia AA” badge in chrome and yellow taken off my 1949 Beetle when I sold it 50 years ago in Livingstone. (I think?) Then there’s an old paperboard Chinese Checkers board, a few strange woodworking tools I haven’t used in over 15 years, two matched sets of orange cycle fenders. I also have a ’65 Corvair engine in pieces up on the mezzanine, with a PA/Guitar amp and two 4-foot-high speaker towers.

Hyperv6’s grab bag:

@hyperv6: My garage is a collage of useless things but necessary to make it interesting. I have spent a life of collecting all things automotive. I have boxes of emblems, hood ornaments, license plates, posters signed by race drivers and Smokey Yunick, cases with diecast cars and models I have built. Plates from concours tours, metal auto product signs—some real, some not.

Most of one wall is covered by a 24 x 12 C4 Corvette billboard. Gas pump nozzles. Some race parts like an Austin Dillon NASCAR truck Bass Pro tailgate. Little over half of a Trans Am Jaguar clamshell hood. None of this is a must-have but it makes for walls that make you stand and look at all that is there.

On the floor I have a table built from a complete Top Fuel funny car short-block. The blower case is a broom holder. Porsche seats on each side facing the TV. The zombie headers are arm rests for the chairs upside down. Finally, the most useless item is a tire from the main landing gear of the Space Shuttle.

The ceiling is storage for my son’s old soap box derby cars, hung upside down. We wanted to keep them but needed to keep them out of the way. I also gave a fleet of old and new Goodyear blimp inflatables. We are near the blimp base here and they visit often. I am always on the lookout for something new to add. You never know what pops up at the track, swap meet, or yard sale.

I have had people come in and just stare at the walls. It is where I have been and what I do. It is my scrapbook.

@Al: Had that C4 billboard poster back in the ’80s—it covered a whole hallway wall in my house. Now I walk past a photo of a ’60s Ferrari race garage in the garage. A buddy gave it to me when I told him I could have bought a Ferrari with the house down payment. The two other walls have the usual automobilia including plates, signs, neon clock, grilles, posters, and emblems of cars past and present. My neighbor’s high-school motor head daughter was a little overwhelmed, first time they saw all the stuff! It all tells my story too!

Me, Myself, and I

@Dean: My most useless trinket is myself, when I don’t “get out in the shop and get some work done.”

***