I have a set-up similar to WPF's DependencyProperty and DependencyObject system. My properties however are generic. A BucketProperty has a static GlobalIndex (defined in BucketPropertyBase) which tracks all BucketProperties. A Bucket can have many BucketProperties of any type. A Bucket saves and gets the actual values of these BucketProperties... now my question is, how to deal with the storage of these values, and what is the penalty of using a typecasting when retrieving them? I currently use an array of BucketEntries that save the property values as simple objects. Is there any better way of saving and returning these values?

Beneath is a simpliefied version:

public class BucketProperty<T> : BucketPropertyBase
{

}

public class Bucket
{
    private BucketEntry[] _bucketEntries;

    public void SaveValue<T>(BucketProperty<T> property, T value)
    {
        SaveBucketEntry(property.GlobalIndex, value)
    }
    public T GetValue<T>(BucketProperty<T> property)
    {
        return (T)FindBucketEntry(property.GlobalIndex).Value;
    } 
}

public class BucketEntry
{
    private object _value;
    private uint _index;
        public BucketEntry(uint globalIndex, object value)
        {
            ...
        }
}