October 2013 – Page 4 – Things I find in the garbage

The electronic tower

October 9, 2013October 9, 2013 garbagefinds9 Comments

Back in early September I found a large collection of electronics in Outremont and brought them to my friend’s shed for storage. This week has been mostly slow so far, partly because I took Monday and Tuesday morning off, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to show you what I saved.

First off is this beautiful old radio. I figure it’s a vacuum tube system which was pretty common in the 1930s-1950s. I can’t remember the brand name and I have a hard time making it out from the photo due to the odd writing style. Regardless, it actually works fairly well. I thought it didn’t work at first but it seems that the radio just takes half a minute or so to get “warm.” It doesn’t get as many stations as a modern machine but an antenna could help with that.

I have to figure out what brand it is before I can tell what it’s worth, but I imagine I should be able to sell this for at least 50$. It’s a pretty classic, collectible design.

I found four different reel-to-reel audio players / recorders. Two of them, the Wollensak 3m below and the Grundig TK-23 above seem to work fine. If so they are worth around 40-50$ each. The others seem to only partially work (as in they’ll fast forward but not play). It’s possible though that I just don’t know how to use them.

Fortunately I have a tonne of audio reels to play around with! I’m lucky my friend with a car (and storage) helped me as otherwise I wouldn’t have had the space or ability to take all this stuff, especially these boxes full of old reels and cassettes.

Some of the reels are marked as being classical music but most don’t give any hints as to what’s inside. There are lots of blank, unopened cassettes and also some pre-recorded music by Greek musicians.

Last but not least is this tower of electronics. Not all of it works, with the bottom Beta player and the top 8-track player having obvious issues. The rest, a bunch of receivers and a cassette player, passed the basic tests by turning on and looking good doing so. It’s hard to test them further without some speakers to connect them to. The best pieces of this bunch are the Clairtone receiver (2nd from bottom) and the Nikko cassette player (3rd from top) which could be worth maybe 80 buck and 100 bucks respectively, assuming they work of course, based on what I see on Ebay.

In the near future I’ll test this stuff further in preparation to sell it. Whatever doesn’t work I’ll put on the Craigslist “free” section.

I have this evening off (though, if any Montrealers know of a Wednesday evening trash pickup let me know!) but I hope to make some more good finds tomorrow morning in either Outremont or Rosemont. As usual I’ll let you know where it goes.

Man and his World

October 4, 2013 garbagefinds5 Comments

Yesterday evening and this morning were pretty barren so I figured it’d be a good time to show you more of the books I found on Tuesday. I still have some to sort through but these are the oldest ones of the bunch. All the photos are highly detailed images, so feel free to zoom up and take a closer look.

The one that doesn’t match here is the guide to the “Man and his World” exhibit at Expo 67. The rest of the books here are quite old, with the most modern being the mid 40s book of missals at the top left and the oldest being the English textbook that lies in the middle (published 1876). There’s also a book featuring popular songs of Canada published in 1880. It’s missing the front cover but I’m sure someone would have an interest in seeing these old songs.

These books all feature a similar ornate red cover. The bottom two are little books describing various famous French Canadian figures dated 1913 and 1926 respectively. The top is a memoir by Silvio Pellico, a Italian writer who lived in the early 19th century. The book is called “Mes Prisons” and tells the story of his being sent to prison for the crime of “carbonarism” – basically being a member of the Carbonari revolutionary movement. I’m not sure when it was published but I’d guess it would have been around the late 1800s.

The book at the top left is another old English textbook. I thought the scribbled calligraphy was pretty cool. My favourites though are the two Geography textbooks. The little one is from 1912 and the bigger one is from 1914. I’ve always enjoyed looking at maps, as a kid I spent many hours looking at a giant National Geographic atlas of the world. I’ve posted a few pictures of the inside of these books below. I think the map of Africa is particularly interesting as it shows how the land was divided amongst the European powers. I also like the old map of Montreal which is found in the larger book.

It’s a guarantee that in these old textbooks, when discussing the world, the authors will say something overtly racist. In the text on Africa they describe the native populations as “negres sauvages” or negro savages. Then, in the study question they ask whether or not the indigenous race is “civilized.” We’ve got a ways to go but I like to think humanity has made some progress since then!

Last but not least is this old book entitled “Lectures instructives et amusantes sur diverses inventions, découvertes, ?” (Informative and entertaining lectures on various inventions and discoveries). I couldn’t find a date but apparently it was first published in Montreal in 1866 and the last print came in the final years of the 1800s. What’s most interesting is how the obviously originally hand-written text changes often throughout the book. You can see some of the differing forms of calligraphy below. There must have been a few different people collaborating to write this.

That’s all for now. This evening I’ll explore the eastern Plateau where I’ll see if whoever threw out these books is putting out more stuff today.

Elocution

October 3, 2013October 3, 2013 garbagefinds11 Comments

This week has brought me some good finds. I explored a new route north of the 40 in Ahuntsic (or Cartierville, I’m not exactly sure) on Monday morning. My main find there was this power drill. I charged the battery and it works fine. It’s a nice area, though sort of far as well. I might continue doing it on Monday mornings until it gets too cold.

Yesterday morning I went again to TMR by car with a couple of friends which seems to be becoming a weekly tradition. We got some good stuff, including some nice lamps, an old trunk and some cool Egyptian decorative plates, but I forgot my camera at a friends house and thus was unable to take pictures.

My best finds, however, came on Tuesday evening in the Plateau (rue Chambord). There were bags full of papers, books and other miscellanea. A lot of the books were very old (a few of which you’ll soon see). However, some weren’t in very good shape, and others were being eaten by this weird bug I hadn’t seen before (likely a common furniture beetle) which had burrowed holes through the pages. They had probably been stored somewhere slightly damp. Still, I saved around a bag full of the books.

I was a bit worried about bed bugs but I’m quite certain that what I thought I might have seen – a long dead bug – may have also just been an oddly shaped piece of debris, or perhaps one of these furniture beetle things. It could have also been a dead bug from an infestation that occurred years and years ago. In short what I saw was definitely not conclusive. Regardless, better safe than sorry. Despite finding no other evidenced I baked everything I found here in the oven on the lowest setting for around 30 minutes. Bugs can’t stand the heat.

I found two non-functioning “Smiths Empire” pocketwatches and a 80% Silver pocketwatch case in a little bag. The Smiths Empire watches were probably made in the 50s, the other case I would guess dates to a bit before the turn of the century.

The old case is quite beautiful. Engraved inside is the name Julian Ranka. You can see a picture of the engraving below.

I figure all together I can probably sell this stuff for around 50$ on Ebay.

I’m on a bit of a vintage glasses hot streak lately. I found four pairs a few weeks ago and this pile contained a few as well. I’ve got to figure out what to do with them. I might bring them to the vintage eyeglasses store to see if they want to buy them. If not they’d make a great lot on Ebay.

A couple of crosses and some odd decoration.

Here’s a few of the old books. I still have some more to sort through, I’ll let you know if any of them are particularly noteworthy. These are all school books. The first looks to be a high school cooking class textbooks from 1958. The second is a “treatise on elocution” (verbal expression) written for students and teachers and published in 1886. The last, “Town’s New Speller and Definer,” focuses also on pronunciation but also spelling. It was published in 1866.

My favourite, however, is this book. I knew it must have been pretty old because the cover is made out of wood or bark.

It’s an abridged version of the Old Testament published in Montreal way back in 1815. That’s just about 200 years ago, back when the population of Montreal was only around 16000 people. Montreal was small enough that the printers only felt it necessary to write their address simply as “Rue St Jacques.”

There’s a message written lightly in pencil as well as a name that seems to begin with “Jean.” Any ideas as to what it says would be appreciated, the writing is fairly hard to read! The book is in decent shape for its age. The pages look to all be there, though some are a bit bent and folded.

Pretty cool, right? I think it might be my oldest find of my trash picking career!

I head to Rosemont and the Mile End later to see what the trash offers me this time.