Here’s some finds from one of my best spots of 2018. It started with lots of quality housewares and silver plated items, most of which went straight to the auction house. You can see a few of those finds below, but I know there was lots more I lost track of.
That brass coffee mill was a nice piece, it was made in Greece and sold for 40$. The tall glass & silver plate pitcher sold for 44$. Silver plated lots like the one at bottom right do pretty well at the local auction, which is good because the individual pieces are rarely worth listing on eBay (due to their size / high shipping costs) and are a pain to get good money for at yard sales.
My most profitable finds came later on, towards the end of the spot’s productive streak. One day I opened up a bag and saw a jewelry box.
The contents looked to have been picked over but there was still plenty of good stuff left for me.
Most of my profit will come from those tie clips at bottom left – both are Italian 18k gold and together they’re worth about 300$ in scrap. You can see the hallmarks in the picture below! All the pieces to the left of the knife are either silver or gold excepting the large penny (the other coin is a silver 50 cent piece). The knife is actually a souvenir Cretan dagger, the blade isn’t particularly well crafted but the sheath is 93.5% silver. I found the exact same one a few years ago in Montreal West and sold it on eBay for 25$. I think I’ll ask for a little bit more this time around.
That bag was great, but this one ended up being more notable. It looked like someone just took a junk drawer and simply dumped the contents inside. There was a lot of crap in there (mostly boring papers), but I could tell that there were some potentially valuable smalls hanging around near the bottom of the bag. I took the whole thing to the car for closer examination.
I found a bunch of stamps, a couple of broken gold chains, and an unusual tobacco pipe with some kind of decorative metal encasement (please share any information you might have about its origins!). However, the most valuable thing pictured is the watch strap.
The buckle was 18k gold and had similar markings to the Patek Philippe buckle I found a few years ago and sold for 650$. This one lacks the “PPd” hallmark, but apparently the “AW” company also did work for other luxury Swiss brands like Vacheron Constantin and Omega. Fortunately for me many hardcore watch collectors seek out only original parts even down to the lowly buckle. As a result, this one sold fairly quickly for 400$.
That bag also held a nearly unbelievable find…
… this wad of cash! American money at that. The stash was held together with a white paper clip and I’d guess the people just didn’t notice it when dumping out the drawer. The found bills totaled 307$, which turned into nearly 400$ when I traded it in at the bank. This is easily my best cash find to date – my previous best was the 140$ I found in the pockets of trashed shirts earlier this year. Before that my record was the 27$ I found way back in 2013. It’s funny how finds like these sometimes happen in bunches.
That wasn’t it for the cash though. I also found an old wallet, inside of which was 21$ in old bills. The folks doing the tossing clearly didn’t possess great attention to detail. The house was sold, so perhaps they were just in a rush. Either way, as you can tell this spot did me quite well! Here’s hoping I keep finding cash in 2019.
Soon enough I’ll share my year in review / top finds of 2018. I was so swamped this summer that a few of my best finds didn’t even make the blog, so you’re bound to be surprised by at least a few things.
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