An unexpected heirloom: the hidden value of a humble flowerpot

An Unexpected Heirloom: The Hidden Value of a Humble Flowerpot

It sat on the windowsill for as long as I could remember.

A chipped, terracotta flowerpot. No glaze. No pattern. No obvious charm. Just a squat little vessel holding whatever plant my grandmother happened to be nursing back to life at the time—basil one year, a stubborn geranium the next. When I was a child, I never gave it a second thought. It was just there, like the creak in the floorboards or the ticking of the kitchen clock.

It wasn’t until years later—after my grandmother was gone and the house stood half-empty—that I realized how wrong I had been.

That flowerpot was never just a flowerpot.

The Things We Inherit Without Noticing

When people think of heirlooms, they imagine jewelry wrapped in velvet, grandfather clocks that dominate a room, or oil paintings passed down with whispered instructions. Heirlooms are supposed to look important.

But most families don’t pass down museums. They pass down objects that survived.

A chipped mug. A worn recipe card. A threadbare quilt. And sometimes, a humble flowerpot.

When I returned to my grandmother’s house to help sort through her belongings, the flowerpot was still there. Empty now. Cracked a little more than before. I almost tossed it into the donation pile without thinking.

Then my aunt stopped me.

“Don’t throw that out,” she said quickly. “That was your great-grandmother’s.”

I laughed. “This?”

She nodded. “That.”

A History You Can Hold in Your Hands

The flowerpot had belonged to my great-grandmother, who brought it with her when she immigrated decades ago. She couldn’t bring furniture. She couldn’t bring keepsakes. Space was precious.

But she brought that pot.

Why? No one was sure. Maybe it held a plant from her garden. Maybe it reminded her of home. Maybe she just needed something sturdy to grow food in a new country.

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