I mentioned I had a great time picking in the McGill Ghetto during move-out day. That way was back at the beginning of May, but I haven’t gotten around to mentioning it until now.
From what I hear move-out day is a phenomenon across the world. Basically, a lot of students move after their academic years end, and when people move they inevitably leave stuff behind. I wrote a fairly in-depth post about the event last year.
In past years I’ve been busy or haven’t taken the day particularly seriously. This year though I decided to go out of my way to see what I could find. I went with a couple friends and even recorded a bit of video, though we haven’t done anything with the footage yet.
There’s no shortage of things to be saved on move-out day. We (and many other scavengers!) saved lots of clothes, food, books, school supplies, and so on. I think I got particularly lucky this year though. All the stuff in today’s post came from a single spot, one of the first we stopped at. It’s hard to fathom why the previous owner threw these things away, though I’d guess that they’re privileged enough not to have to consider the financial implications of their actions.
One of the things that has surprised me most in my garbage flipping career is the amount of money I’ve made from used perfumes. I had no idea that such a market existed before a couple years ago. The Replica perfume on the left for example sold quickly on eBay for 75$. The “Juliette has a Gun” is listed for 60$, while the Vanilla one sold at a yard sale for 4$ (it was originally 20$ at Anthropologie). I’d guess that I’ve made around 2000$ selling perfumes in the last two years – that’s around 5% of my income!
I also got 30$ for that Links of London silver bracelet, which I noted in my last post.
I love finding cash in the trash. Easy money right? A lot of this change came from inside a laundry bag. I found more (including the bills) inside some used purses, and the rest was loose inside the bags. All in all it added up to around 40$.
Click on the picture to see a GIF my friend made! We found three 24s of Sleeman’s sitting on the curb, while a bunch of other cans (some of which were still cold) and most of a bottle of Vodka were saved from the bags. This is easily 100$ of booze right here. Unfortunately I’m not a big Sleeman’s fan, but they have been useful as bartering chips.
I found another original iPad, which I flipped recently on Kijiji for 80$. I guess we’re at the point now where working 1st generation iPads are being thrown out on a regular basis – I saved another one just this February. I used the photo of the last iPad here because it turned out a bit better.
My best find though was easily this Macbook Pro. It’s an order of magnitude better than the last one I found. For one, it’s a 2012 model instead of a 2009, and it has a 15″ screen instead of a 13″. It came with the power cable, and even the battery works well. It’s easily a 600-700$ computer, and it’s definitely better than the Asus I bought last year.
It was locked with a password when I found it. I’m not really tech savvy, but using Google I was able to find a way to bypass the password and basically delete the old account from the computer. Apparently the laptop hadn’t been used since 2014, so I’d guess that the previous owner got a better computer and didn’t care about this one. Either way, it works out well for me!
As you can see I had a great time on move-out day. I look forward to doing it again next year, though I don’t expect to get this lucky every time.
In other news, I’m moving today so wish me luck! If all goes well I should have a bit of time tomorrow to check out moving day trash. To clarify, moving day is a totally different thing and a uniquely Quebec phenomenon.