Network engineer, but I made some bucks in Silicon valley during the boom. Currently I'm self employed, and managing to string together a living , but its scaled down alot over the past year. I put a lot of my money into "tangible assets" when things started to melt down, namely art and furniture. I collect quite a bit, and my partner caught the bug from me. Most of our house is period Arts and Crafts style circa 1900-1910. Our house is a 1910 Edwardian, and it goes with our stuff really well. The basket was actually given to me about 3 years ago by my sister, because She sort of thinks if you collect "art", anything that qualifies as such is a good fit. She got it probably 10 years ago, but I don't know what she paid for it. I have it insured, along with most everything else. Its very nice, but like I said, it doesn't really go too well with the rest of my stuff. I bought heavily into New England art pottery over the past 5 years, and have done far better than the stock market, although I haven't really sold too much, but rather traded up for some furniture and other pottery. I could talk about this stuff for days and days, so I won't. I'm glad I bought art, and not a car, or god forbid, more stock; Living with it has a major impact on my life.