I’m doing the occasional car route these days, but most of my trips have been via bike to the Plateau and Mile End. These treks are good exercise and occasionally productive, more often now because the cold encourages most of the other pickers to stay home.
Around the new year I checked out the McGill area to see if I’d find any move-out stuff, thinking that some students might move and ditch their old crap after the fall semester. I did find a little bit of stuff, but not much of any value. Still, I’ll probably give it a go again next year as maybe I’ll be luckier. My favourite find from McGill was this collection of mostly full teas, some of which look pretty fancy.
I’ve been finding a bit of neat stuff over the past few weeks at a spot in the Mile End. It seems like someone’s slowly clearing out an apartment.
I think these things belonged to someone from the Balkans. The cool hand carved ashtray on the left is marked as being made in Zagreb in 1963, while the ashtray on the bottom is signed Sarajevo. If anyone can tell me what’s written on the cigarette case I’d be interested to hear it!
The fan features sticker images from different touristy spots in Quebec. Sorry it’s a bit blurry! The Minolta 16 camera is quite small and cool looking. They’re not super valuable, but the camera is great yard sale material. It’s in nice cosmetic condition, and comes with a flash. The negatives are medium format and look to be from the 60s.
For whatever reason there were a bunch of watch cases without any insides. They looks cool, again not worth much but good for yard sales. I figure someone will want the roll of scrap leather. It’s hard to make it out from the photo, but the leather pouch on the left was made for the Boy Scouts. I don’t know what it would have held. There were a few photos left over in that Limocolor photo holder, but most of the photos I’ve seen in the bags were ripped up before I got there.
The most valuable pieces I’ve found there so far are probably the pewter figurines. I think they were made for Dungeons and Dragons, by a company called Ral Partha. This kind of stuff has value, and from my research I think I can get around 50$ for the lot.
I’m keeping an eye on that spot, and will let you know if I come across anything else that’s cool! I also saved a bunch of decent looking silk scarves, as well as a few bits of clothes but unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of those.
Otherwise, the late January move-out trash has been surprisingly good thus far. I’ve been focusing a bit more lately on yuppie trash, making sure to bike past the nicer condo units in the area. So far the strategy seems to be working well enough. I found this nearly full bottle of Guerlain “La Petite Robe Noire” EdP in front of a nice house on Laurier, and was able to quickly flip it for 30$.
I found a bunch of other scents elsewhere, including another by Guerlain. I don’t really like these ones because they remind me of high school gym class, but hopefully I can make some money off them regardless.
More interesting was a large collection of photos (lots more than what’s shown here!) that someone took of various sporting events. I haven’t had a chance yet to look at them much, but a lot of the photos are of car races and some are from an NFL game with Peyton Manning at quarterback.
My favourites though were some shots of an Expos game. They were probably taken in ’98 or ’99 as those were the years when Brad Fullmer played regularly in Montreal. The photographer largely focused on Mark McGuire and Vladimir Guerrero, the latter of which was one of my favourite players back in the day. I only really got into baseball around 2002, so it’s cool to see these photos that remind me of those early years. I’ll probably keep a shot or two of Vladdy and sell the rest at a yard sale. A lot of them are decent photos – I’d bet they were taken by an amateur with a relatively expensive camera.
I came across a box full of vintage baby clothes while touring around Outremont. A lot of them still have their original tags on – they were made by a company called Lebretton, which I can’t find much reference to on google. Still, they’re very cute and people on Instagram said they’d do well on Etsy. Some have minor stains, but I figure the ones on white fabric might be easy to spot bleach away.
While out on one of my morning walks I happened across a pile of bags in front of a recently sold apartment. From it I saved a whole bunch of decent, re-usable junk. Fortunately there was an empty box nearby as I didn’t have my backpack on me. I took a chance on that maple creme liqueur but it was definitely past its prime. Down the drain it went, but at least I recycled the bottle.
The most valuable single item from that pile was probably this nice Lampe Berger. Based on my research I should be able to sell it for around 40$ + shipping. The rest (again) was decent yard sale junk.
Otherwise, I came up mostly empty from a run through the Plateau (east of St Denis) except for a find from this box of junk. It didn’t look like much, but I figured I’d poke around anyways.
Amongst the crap was an old container (my guess is that it held margarine) filled with curiosities, including a few pieces of bone, a drawing of a dove, a small crystal, an empty bullet, and a 10k gold ring. Someone on Instagram said it looked like “black magic” and recommended I put it back. I do think it looks a bit like black magic, but I’m definitely keeping the gold ring. It’s just junk gold, but because it’s fairly hefty at 3.75g it should make me around 65$. Not bad!
Otherwise, I’ll save perhaps my best recent find until next time!
Relevant links
1. Facebook page
2. My eBay listings
3. Etsy store
4. Kijiji listings
5. Contribute to Garbagefinds.com
Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com. I often fall behind on emails, so I apologize in advance if it takes me a while to get back to you.