I was busy for a lot of last week preparing, packing, and shipping things I had sold. I try not to buy boxes – I usually take them from the recycling – but this time I caved and spent the few extra bucks. More on that, and a poor experience with the UPS store later. All this took away from my regular hunting schedule, but I still made it out for a few runs.
I’ve been going to Cote St-Luc on Sunday nights for a while, but decided to take the night off after I struck out there last week. My first run of the week was to NDG, Snowdon, and Hampstead. I came across this oil heater not far from upper Westmount. It works fine, and I put it up on Kijiji for 25$.
Later on, I drove by this recycling bin and did a double-take. Inside the paper bags was a bunch of books, the vast majority of which were written in a language I couldn’t understand.
I took some regardless. Many had pretty cool covers, and I know there is somewhat of a market for vintage, foreign-language books.
I was able to figure out the language (at least of some), mostly due to this Englesko-Hrvatski dictionary. Hrvatski is the language of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and some parts of Serbia. It was published in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia in the 1950s.
I thought this Aldous Huxley book was particularly cool. “Konec Civilizace” translates to “End of Civilization.” Huxley doesn’t appear to have a book by that title in English, but it could be a non-literal translation of a book like “Brave New World.” I wonder if I could get a bit of money for it.
Edit: apparently it is “Brave New World.”
The oldest was a book by Jana Nerudy, published in 1893. Another one of my favourites is a book of plants and flowers written in German and published in 1940.
I went to Mount Royal on Tuesday night. I came across this big 40″ flatscreen TV and decided to take it home. I don’t usually bother with these types of TVs, as the broken ones are usually cheap brands that don’t even have much value for parts. However, this one was a Toshiba, which to my knowledge is a decent brand name so I decided to give it a shot. It has some issues with the screen, but it might be an easy fix according to some people on Youtube. If not, I’ll leave it on the curb for someone (hopefully more handy than I) to find.
Not longer later I came across three golf bags, all full of clubs. None of the clubs looked spectacular, but I took the one set in front, thinking the bag itself might be worth something (it was vintage and made in the USA). It didn’t end up being worth selling, but I did salvage a nice golf umbrella and a bunch of vintage Jack Nicklaus “Golden Bear” golf bolls, which I may be able to get a bit of money for. I left the bag and clubs on the street by my friend’s place, and they were gone before long.
Later on, I opened up a promising-looking recycling bin and saw a stack of old records. To my knowledge, records are not recyclable.
I took the lot, which amounted to about 50 records. Many are by Hebrew bands (including a prog-rock band by the name of “Poogy”) and singers, and manufactured in Israel. There were also albums by more familiar artists, such as Simon and Garfunkel, The Band, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and John Denver. I’ll probably keep a couple, sell a few at a yard sale, and bundle the hebrew ones together to sell as a lot on eBay.
I was pretty excited when I saw this big pile in front of a recently sold house in Cote St-Luc on Wednesday night, but it turned out to be mostly a bunch of junk.
I did save a few things, however. I thought the cover of this 1987 (the year I was born!) Guinness Book of World Records was pretty cool.
I also saved this doll. I’m not sure if it’s a marionette with missing strings, or something meant to be hung from the ceiling.
Otherwise, I brought home: a hebrew wall clock, two small prayer books (one with a silver plate cover), a watch with hebrew numerals, a leather punch, an electric pencil sharpener …
… and a decorative hebrew “book.” I’ve been finding tons of Jewish stuff recently!
I went to a going away party on Thursday night, causing me to miss a planned Friday morning run. Instead, I took a walk with a friend in the eastern part of the Plateau in the evening. We didn’t find much. However, this one spot provided some small change (maybe 5$ in all), some tennis and golf balls, an iPod charger (I needed one of these, as mentioned in the last post!), and a decent bike seat.
It was a pretty quiet week overall, likely due to people being in a rush to get everything in order for the holidays. Sales, as a direct result, have been pretty decent!
Last week’s garbage sales (December 15 – December 21)
1. Vintage Vuarnet Skilynx Sunglasses (1984 Olympics): on eBay for 75$. Found late November in Mount Royal.
2. Lot of vintage hotel keys: on eBay for 50$. I’m happy to get this total. I know I could have gotten more selling them individually, but it would have been hours more work as well. Found in NDG and discussed in last week’s post.
3. Avon sterling silver spoon ring: on Etsy for 34$. I have another one exactly like it, which is now up in my Etsy store. I can’t remember where I found it, but it definitely came with one of my massive jewelry hauls in 2012 or early 2013.
4. Five antique Quebec law books (Set of 4 from 1909, and one from 1934): on eBay for 80$. Found in Ville St-Laurent in early November.
Refunds: 40$ (native mask). I noticed a few extra, minor defects when examining the item that weren’t there previously. I sent pictures and the offer of a minor refund to the buyer, and he was still interested. This makes the profit around 205$ instead of the 245$ listed in the last post. A nice profit regardless.
Total: 214$ (including the refund), 8820.50$ since May 18th. A decent week. Sales slowed down towards the end, likely marking the end of the holiday boom.
In related news
There was definitely a bit of a mad rush to my eBay and Etsy stores last week. In order to save myself a bit of time and hassle I decided to bring the books and the native moon mask (from last week’s post) to the UPS Store for packing. Last time I went (with the tea cups) I received very good service for a very fair price, and felt very confident in the packing that the employee did.
This time, however was quite the opposite. I felt a bit suspicious of the person working there from the start. For one, she asked me to pick out the size of box I wanted to ship in, which I thought was a bit odd as it’s her job, not mine to know how to pack an item. I went along with the questionable requests for a while, but also became more and more suspicious. For one, I didn’t think that she had put much wrapping around the books, although I hadn’t watched closely enough to be sure.
When it came to pay, she told me the price for packing and shipping was going to be 95$, about 80$ of which was for shipping. That seemed outrageous, since one package was barely leaving Montreal and the other was going to Toronto, both of which are cheap, one day deliveries by Canada Post. Based on this price, and my serious reservations about the pack job, I declined and paid just the 15$ for the packing, which was mostly the cost of the boxes and bubble wrap.
I went to Canada Post, which was conveniently right next door, and I opened the boxes to see how they were packed. She had done an unbelievably bad job. The books had one sheet of bubble wrap around them, and were surrounded by half a box of empty space. She didn’t even put packing peanuts in there – there was nothing to keep them in place. The books would have just been rolling around inside the box. Books aren’t even particularly fragile, but I’m sure these would have been ruined or at least heavily damaged on even the short trip they were going on.
The native mask was also packed poorly. She put a couple of pages of bubble wrap loosely around it, and then filled the box around half-way with package peanuts inside. The item would have moved a lot inside the box, and I felt had poor protection at the bottom. This one was less of a total disaster of a pack job, but I’m still not at all confident that it would have arrived at its destination unscathed.
My friend Sarah was fortunately around to help me repack the items with some free newspaper (while being careful not to let it be in direct contact with the item, as that stuff tends to smear pretty badly) and some cardboard that happened to be lying around. I’m confident in the pack job that we did.
To top it all off, guess what it cost to ship the items by Canada Post? 35$, or less than half what UPS (or at least this one person) was going to charge me. I’m not sure I’ve ever had such a night and day experience with a business. Last time it was very good, and this time was a near disaster. I’ll likely use the UPS Store again, but only with fragile and valuable goods, and only if certain people are working.
New listings
2 vintage “Frontier Town” pamphlets, 1950s / 1960s
Sterling silver Avon spoon ring (the second of the two that I’ve found)
Vintage compact, decorated with mother of pearl (a little make-up box with a mirror)
1948 Winnepeg phone book
The phone book is at a high price, but sometimes I do that with this things I most appreciate. I think that phone book is amazing, and if it were from Montreal I’d probably keep it myself. I think it’s possible to find a buyer at that price, and if not I can always lower it as time goes on.
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