I haven’t seen anything at this spot for quite some time, as such this will almost certainly be the last post of this series. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted! I saved lots of neat little tidbits here.
One noteworthy find was a large collection of what I believe are old fax jokes from the early 1980s. Maybe you could call them a sort of proto-meme. Anyways, most of the jokes are terrible (largely sexist, occasionally racist, and often rated R) and I don’t want to share them here. However, here’s a couple of PG13 jokes to give you an idea what they look like. This one makes fun of former Quebec Premier René Levesque.
René folds out and turns into four pigs. The fold-out thing is a common trick in the faxes, but most of them result in awful sex jokes. Levesque was last Premier in 1985, which makes me think that they date from a bit before that.
This one was kind of funny, a bit of office humor never hurt anyone. The rest of the collection is currently with a local archivist though I don’t think he has any specific plans for them. I’m sure someone would be interested in the studying them somehow.
This pic didn’t turn out so well, but it’s good enough. The pen next to the Yak Bak is an old Parker 51 with a silver cap. It was pretty beat up, but still sold pretty quickly for 30$. I’m always happy to find a 51 because they’re fairly collectible, and are worth money even if just for parts. Otherwise, the rest is yard sale stuff. The Canadair pin will end up in the Canadair lot I mentioned in my last post. The miniature garbage bin is a fun find for me!
More yard sale stuff. The miniature vintage spy camera is kind of neat. The box on the left contains another dumb sex joke, seems like the previous owner couldn’t get enough of those.
That old coffee tin is a neat find. Otherwise, the promotional cigarette pack holders are interesting – I’ve never seen anything quite like them before. There’s a spot for a huge pack of cigarettes as well as a matchbook.
More yard sale stuff. Some of it is actual junk that no one will ever buy, but I like to have a bit of crap at my sales to make things more interesting. People seem to appreciate seeing things they wouldn’t see otherwise! The vintage Vita hypodermic needles won’t make it to the yard sale though, for obvious safety reasons. Not that I think they’ve been used anytime in the last 40 years but they’re still quite sharp and the box is fragile. Believe it or not there’s a market for that kind of thing on eBay, I’m not sure why.
One night I scavenged some better junk than usual. The best piece is probably the 10k gold Canadair pin, which I’ll include in the Canadair lot. I also had a sterling silver Canadair 5 or 10 year pin but I’m not sure where I put it – I’m sure it’ll turn up though. Here’s hoping that segment of chain on the right is gold as well. The Wade Red Rose tea figurine will look nice once cleaned up. The Quebec pin is sterling silver, but too worn out to be of much value. The Chauffeur safety badge is neat and quite old, probably dating back to the 30s or 40s.
Perhaps the most unusual, and also valuable find here was this collection of 13 vintage hermetically sealed packs of MacDonald’s cigarettes. The packaging probably dates back to the 50s or 60s but it’s hard to pin it down exactly. The fact that they’re hermetically sealed, and also 5-packs (which I think would have been an unusual size) is a bit odd. I suspect they were either part of military rations or given out on airplanes back when smoking on them was legal. The latter might be more likely, if only because it seems like whoever lived here worked for an airline.
Vintage cigarettes stuff is pretty collectible, and sure enough these stale old packs have some value. I decided to list them all for 35$ each plus shipping. Thus far 10 have sold (5 to one person at a bit of a discount) for a total of around 300$. Not bad, and by the time they’re all gone I should make around 400$!
In a lot of homes this kind of stuff would have been thrown out years ago. Thankfully, some people hold onto their old things for a long time and as a trash picker I’m kind of grateful for that. Sometimes it results in some really interesting garbage that I wouldn’t find anywhere else. I wish there was a way for me to know exactly where to find this kind of stuff at any given time, but unfortunately the only way is to bike or drive around randomly and hope you end up in the right place at the right time (and then, go back again and again until it’s clear that there’s no more garbage to be tossed out).
Relevant links
1. Facebook page
2. My eBay listings
3. Etsy store
4. Kijiji listings
5. Contribute to garbagefinds.com
6. Follow me on Instagram
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.