I'm very much liking the look of these. They're good, clear and functional models - though I think you can probably simplify a couple of them and save some polygons. Remember not to worry about making the tiny items perfect, as they're probably barely visible in game. That gun at the bottom is looking very promising, and the FO style inventory icon is looking pretty awesome and pretty accurate as far as I can tell without checking it in game.
For trimming a few bits off the poly count, if you think the bottle of buffout or heart medallion are going to be relative to the size of the character's hands... then that's roughly something like this (little photoshop test) :
http://s17.postimage.org/8q8zd20nv/itemsizes_copy.pngthat's the medallion on the left, and bottle of buffout on the right... I think.
Not a great pictorial example, and they might end up 2x bigger - but I'm sure you get the idea. You could skip the fine detail of the chain (or perhaps ignore it entirely?), as it's going to be less than a pixel big. We're still likely to be using the original sprites for inventory pictures, and possibly on-the-floor items, so feel free to trim out some details, or simply apply them with the texturing. Armours and weapons, and anything which already appears in game needs to be pretty spot on (i.e. we want metal armour 3D to look like metal armour 2D), but the extra stuff which isn't already represented by an in-game sprite... I think you can be pretty free with those if you want (someone else feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
You could trim the count on the buffout by using a 8 or even 6 sided bottle, rather than 10 (i.e. the "circle" has fewer segments). Ultimately it's not going to make much difference visually if you drop that a little.
Don't worry too much and spend ages clawing away at a model to save a few polygons, but you can probably simplify a lot of these by breaking them down into basic shapes and ignoring the rest. There's some great examples if you look at the drink bottles from Haraldx, Mr Gazo and White Tiger on the
Misc items tracker. There's some clever use of a bit of "painted on the texture" shadows and details, which mean you can pretty much make them into simple shapes.
A few bits which always cost loads of polygons are things like straps or wires - every little bend in it will add another 8 or 12 polygons. If you can find a way to chop them off, then I'd recommend it, as even on a high detail object (i.e. gun or armour) they're only going to be a single pixel line on screen. If they're necessary, try and minimise the curves and drop the "cylinder" of the wire to 3 sides. I will try and explain by the use of chocolate :
Old Smarties tubes were too high-poly, so they changed to a hexagonal tube designHowever, Toblerone is the ultimate in low-poly chocolate packaging 
If you've got a non-essential round tube, aim for "Toblerone". If it looks too bad, step it up to 4 or 6 sides. Save those extra polygons for a nicely rounded gun barrel.
As said before - don't waste hours trying to trim a few polygons (it'll make little difference), but if you spot a quick way to cut it by half, go for it.
One of the other bits that'll help a lot, in terms of poly count and appearance would be a bit more painting on the textures - for example on the backpack, a bit of "burn tool" could add a little dirtiness to it, and also emphasise the shadow between the upper / lower sections. We do have some engine lighting / shadow working now, but you can get a little extra definition through a bit of painting. View your models zoomed all the way out, so they're about the right size on screen - should give you a bit of an indication of how visible certain elements are.
Anyway, as said before - all looking very promising. Be good if you could upload the models as .obj or .3ds and the textures, so we can have a closer look and make some further suggestions - and if you'd like, tinker with the models a bit and send them back so you can look yourself how some of the changes are done.
Ultimately, it's great to see some new faces volunteering to help out with this "pile of things that need doing". As several people have noted recently, we're not actually that far off something properly testable, and extra people can often give that little push of motivation to get things moving again. Nice one.
