I’m finally ready to do some blogging after catching up on my picture taking! This spot in Côte Saint-Luc provided some interesting and valuable finds over the span of a few weeks in September & October. The quality junk later turned to renovation materials, and I haven’t found anything of interest there since.
That first week was a good one, providing lots of great finds that made me excited to go back for future garbage days. I always love finding silver – its presence in the trash signifies that the tossers either aren’t paying attention, don’t know what things are worth, or just don’t care. These pieces are Mexican silver, likely made in the 50s or 60s. The pillbox, which was decorated with abalone sold on eBay for 40$ (the customer seemed pleased with their purchase), while the miniature perfume bottles and funnel are currently on sale for 55$.
I pulled these great green enamel industrial lampshades out a bag one night. They sold at auction for 40$ – I would have made more selling them on my own, but so it goes. I still have plenty of stuff that I don’t have time to list, so it’s inevitable that I’ll have to choose the fast nickle over the slow dime.
I found a couple of these vintage 70s outdoor thermometers, which appeared to be new in box. I love the green background on these!
These 1960s Montreal Masonic directory books were certainly unusual. Both had ads for 7-Up on the front and Dow (beer) on the back.
Inside were more ads, including some from Coca-Cola. I’m not sure what they’re worth, but I’m sure they’ll be of interest to a collector.
I found my first model teeth here. They were made by Columbia Dentoform, likely in the 60s and I’d guess that they were used to educate potential dentists. Mine has a dental bridge (made using some kind of silver metal) and well as a tooth cap. These sell for around 40-50$, but I love weird stuff like this and will likely keep it as a conversation piece.
I also found a bunch of plaster dental moulds / impressions, but those are more common and not worth much.
On the left is a ring of sample toothbrushes. I sense a theme? I also found a few old clocks, a neat promotional ruler, an old bar of Avon soap, and a nice makeup kit.
I saved four portable radios / Walkmans, the most valuable of which is the Sony Walkman II at top right. I haven’t tested it yet, but even if it doesn’t work it should sell for around 50$. Maybe more, as red seems to be a less common color for that model. Walkmans can be surprisingly collectible. FYI, from my experience Sonys are the main ones to look out for.
I love finding junk boxes.
This one wasn’t super exciting, but there’s definitely some yard saleable stuff here. To the right of the Swiss coin is a tooth with some gold in it. I don’t think there’s much in there, but I’ll leave that for my jeweler to figure out.
I found a nice pen, a Parker 75 ballpoint pen in sterling silver. It sold quickly for 75$ on eBay.
I also saved a cute brass pill box. On the inside is marked “Made in Italy”.
This vintage party sugar was a fun find. I’m a sucker for old food & packaging, so I think I’ll keep this in my personal collection.
Let’s finish with this cute vintage trash can that dates back to the late 1940s. It was in very nice condition for its age and I figured it would do well at the auction house. However, I wasn’t really expecting it to sell for 85$! I guess these old bins are hard to come by, and thinking about it now this was definitely the nicest one I’ve found over my years of picking.
Winter is definitely here but the finds haven’t slowed much. I’ll share some October trash from Côte-des-Neiges in my next post, and then I’ll get to sharing some more recent junk.
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