The following points highlights the differences between elastic and inelastic collisions - 

1. Momentum is conserved in both types of collisions, but kinetic energy is "conserved" in only elastic collisions.  This means that if you tally the kinetic energies of both object just before the interaction starts and just after it ends, we get the same amount only in elastic collisions.  This assumes that nothing else acts on the objects to increase or decrease kinetic energies.

2. Almost any collision you observe on a human scale will be inelastic.  Examples include, tackles in football, a bat hitting a baseball, two cars colliding and even a superball bouncing on a hard surface.  The most inelastic collisions are ones in which the two objects end up at rest relative to one another.  A bullet shot into a tree would be one case.  The final kinetic energy is nearly zero.

3. Most collisions between air molecules are perfectly elastic.  Otherwise considering how fast and how close together these molecules are, there would be so many collisions losing little bits of energy that in only minutes to hours our atmosphere would cool into a liquid or even a solid state.

4. The "field collisions" (objects interacting with gravitational or electric fields) known with the name of the slingshot effect are just about perfectly elastic.

5. To contrive an elastic collision on a human scale suspend two magnets as pendulums in such a way that when they are allowed to swing toward each other, magnet repulsive forces cause them to bounce away from each other without touching.