Month: October 2012

Silver spoon and more

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Now, to begin posting the stuff I found on Monday!


This sterling silver spoon is dated 1909. It has a somewhat confusing inscription: “The 50th Birthday and Anniversary of Thirty Years in the Confectionary Business, W.H. Luden Reading PA.” Apparently W.H. Luden was the pioneer of the menthol cough drop, which is pretty cool.

I’m not sure what this is, but it’s pretty cool looking. The rope is way too short to be a necklace, so it must have been something that you’d hang on a wall. I figure it’s a symbol that I don’t recognize. Let me know if you think you know what it means!

This plaster “half-bust” is pretty cool. It’s got a few dings here and there, but is otherwise pretty sweet, if maybe a bit creepy.


This cool little candle holder is marked as being made by Carson Statesmetal Industries out of Freeport Pennsylvania. I think it’s made out of pewter. I like the design a lot so I’m thinking I’ll put it in my living room.

Now a nice little tea cup from England. On the bottom is written “Countryside” “Enoch Wedgwood (Tunstall) Ltd.” I used to have one a lot like this but green, but it broke. I think it’ll make a good tea-cup for the house.

Finally, a sealed 1994 video entitled “Fraud Awareness for Merchants” made for the Bank of Montreal. I’m hoping that this video is as cheesy and “90s” as I think it can be. I’m hoping to test out that massive VCR I found with the TV I brought home recently, so I’ll let you know how it goes. I just hope the VCR doesn’t eat the tape! If it’s really good, one of my roommates is into film and all that and she said she could film it pretty easily.

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In other news, I put those cell-phones I found the other day on Ebay and sold them for 15$. Not bad!

Sidewalk sale and one awesome find

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Yesterday I took a walk, partly to look around for trash and partly to feel the strong gusts coming from “Sandy.” There wasn’t much to see for quite some time to start, but coming across this pile of stuff made up for it.

I got the back story from the people bringing out the stuff: an older man passed away and his relatives had to clean out his place at the end of the month. He ran a craft store in downtown Montreal and his name was Nick. It seems that he was a bit of a hoarder, which one person I talked to (although I didn’t really trust him too much) thought began after his marriage broke up years ago.

I wasn’t the only person looking through this pile of stuff, which Nick’s relatives compared to a “sidewalk sale.” The relatives went out of their way to encourage people to look through the stuff and went out of their way to offer me things. They seemed to recognize that there were valuables in among the trash, but for whatever reason didn’t seem especially interested in trying to sell it themselves.

I had some good lighthearted talk with the family members. They said I was their “favorite” of the garbage-pickers, noted that I was definitely the “most patient,” and hoped that I found all the best stuff, all of which I thought was pretty funny.

I’ll get to a bit more storytelling as I unveil the stuff I brought back, which I’ve spent most of the day cleaning. For now, I’m just going go against tradition and show you the best first, which I mean to emphasize the awesomeness of this find more than to disrespect the other things.

This is a 14k gold “Waltham” pocketwatch, which the numbers engraved on the inside (and the certificate of authenticity) indicate as being made in 1918. And here’s the kicker – it still works!

The Waltham Watch company was created in 1850 aiming to “form a watch company that could produce high-quality watches at a lower cost using interchangeable parts“. The company doesn’t exist any more, but it seems like they fulfilled their goal! This watch looks to be in perfect condition. It’s pretty impressive how the mechanism is still functioning as it did almost a hundred years ago.

So, anyways, good start right? I promise the rest of the stuff is cool too! Last time I found a “treasure trove” I made one massive gallery which took forever and in the end probably took away from the items themselves, so this time I’m going to spread the stuff over a bunch of different posts.

A new food source

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Not too much to see on the curb last night. However…

I came across these nice orange mugs among a bag composed mostly of rusty tomato juice tins. I left them near a bixi station for others to take.

I decided to look behind the Metro (a Quebec grocery chain) just to see what was up. Usually chain grocery stores make their garbage pretty inaccessible to the public. This store, however, actually had all their stuff outside.

There were two bins that were full of pretty good stuff. One was entirely composed of old baguettes and other breads made “in house.” The other was full of vegetables. There was some cold cuts too, but I don’t really eat those. I took a bunch of stuff, but I barely scratched the surface of what was actual in these trash bins.

I took home two packages of apples (as if I really needed more!), a package of spinach that looks mostly good, three packages of avocados that were ideally ripe, two things of organic celery, three tomatoes, a pomegranite and an onion! It was pretty convenient because I needed celery for this soup I wanted to make (which turned out pretty well).

The only other stuff of note that I found tonight was in some bags later in the evening. I pulled out this container of (delicious smelling) vanilla from the Dominican and a little jar of dried chilies (a few of which I threw into my soup).

I also found a nice pepper mill. A little clean and this is good to go!

Finally, I found this little USB hard drive in it’s original little felt pouch. I plugged it in and it works – it actually holds the same amount as my current hard drive (237 gigabytes). I know, not exactly up to the terabyte standard that seems to have taken hold now, but still pretty good! I may try to get twenty bucks for it, but it might be good to keep around too. It was actually still full of personal stuff when I found it, which is rare because most people know to format their stuff these days.

In other news, I put a few more things on Craigslist, and did a bit more work on my Etsy store. I’ve been slacking off on the idea but I’d like to get it going. I hope to have things up and running soon!