Last of 2018 pt.3 / Week of the iPods pt.1

Let’s start with a couple more blog-worthy finds that I forgot to add to my “last of 2018” posts. Sometime in mid-summer I was keeping an eye on a spot in Outremont that was providing interesting vintage stuff, including an old Tandy portable computer that sold for 115$.

One day I saved a few small pieces of art. This one, which is roughly the size of a postcard, looks to be signed by Felipe Ehrenberg, a Mexican conceptual artist and neologist who died in 2017. He sounds like a pretty interesting guy to say the least. The signature looks like a match to me, and a few other things I found here indicated that the previous owner likely spent some time in Mexico. It’s hard to find prices for Ehrenberg’s art online, but I’m sure it’s worth something to someone.

You can see a couple other pieces I found below. The one on the left is the biggest of the bunch, around the size of a typical page of printer paper. Like the Ehrenberg piece, it’s also framed cheaply (using tape and cardboard) and shows pinhole marks around the edges. On the right is a sketch, but unfortunately I can’t make out the signature. Zoom in for a closer look!

I only vaguely remember finding this doohickey. It came from a damp environment, and it was pretty green with corrosion before I cleaned it up a bit. I’m not sure what the material is but it looks to have a high copper content. The medallion commemorates the coronation of Napoleon as the King of Italy in 1805. I found a few similar ones online, but none with a bulky chain like this has. Makes me wonder if it was given out as an award at some point. If you know anything about it, please let me know!

In late December some folks in Cote St-Luc tossed some quality Pyrex housewares, vintage 90s clothing in excellent condition, a nice brass menorah (now in my eBay shop), and a small collection of jewellery. There’s lots of silver here, including a pair of Shabbat candle holders stamped with a 925. Similar pieces on eBay attribute their filigree-style design to the Yemenite Jews. I expect the pair to sell for around 150$. Otherwise there’s a couple of pieces featuring turquoise, a bulky ring made in Israel, and a pair of 14k gold earrings. I love finding jewelry, it’s always fun to look at and takes up very little storage space.

In Outremont, this box full of maps and old prints ended up being a nice windfall. The maps mostly dated to the 1600s and 1700s (the dates were often written on the back) and were largely if not entirely cut from old books. They were nicely matted and more or less ready to frame. I ended up dropping off the lot at the auction house, where most sold for between 60-85$. I haven’t done the math, but I definitely made several hundred dollars from the collection.

That’s probably it for 2018, but if I overlooked something cool I’ll make a point to share it here!

January wasn’t a great month, though I found enough to tread water financially. February was much better. This spot in Cote St-Luc provided a slow trickle of quality finds before dumping this avalanche of bags on me a couple weeks back. It might not look like much, but this pile was quite deep and it took me nearly two hours to sort through it all.

I collected a bunch of yard saleable stuff, which I stashed inside a Tupperware bin I found.

This was my box of semi-valuable finds. That PS3 didn’t work but it’ll sell at the auction house, likely to someone who intends to repair it. That Kobo reader works fine – it’s worth about 20-30$. There’s also a Contigo travel mug that looks barely if ever used (these retails for 20+ dollars), an electric nine-speed mixer, an Apple Airport Extreme (which I recently brought to the auction house along with some other older but still useful Apple stuff), a fair of nice Stuart Weitzman boots, an interesting menorah, a signed edition of a Kristin Hannah book, and a cute vintage tin suitcase coin bank.

Their main mistake was throwing out these quality eyeglasses & sunglasses. There’s lots of designer names here including Chanel, Tom Ford, Gucci, Porsche and Oliver Peoples. Most are in great condition as well. So far, I’ve sold the Chanel at middle left for 90$, and the Porsche sunglasses at middle right for 85$. The Oliver Peoples Aero sunglasses (with the yellow lenses) might be the most valuable of the bunch. They seem to sell at around 150-175$, though I’ll try for more to start as the yellow lenses appear to be relatively uncommon.

I also found a bit of jewelry here. They didn’t throw away anything too mind blowing, but I did find a bit of scrap gold and a few nice silver pieces. These folks seem to have moved, so I’m not expecting to find any more treasures there going forward.

Last week I was lucky to happen upon this pile. Here’s how it looked before I started picking…

… and here’s how it looked after. I think it’s important not to make a mess, nothing makes people hate pickers more than ripped trash bags and garbage everywhere!

All the stuff looked to have belonged to kids maybe a little younger than me. A few bags were stuffed with random small items, and I threw those in the car for later sorting.

This place was legendary in terms of electronics. I found two Nintendo DS Lites (both working), four iPods (three not working, which is unusual but they’re still good for parts), a Sony PSP (not working), a couple of digital cameras and a few old phones for my e-waste pile. The Gameboy Micro (top left) might be the most thing here, they seem to sell for over 100$ on eBay. Funny, I’d never seen one before this!

These people were very thoughtful, also tossing the chargers and games to go along with consoles. Most often I’ll find the console but none of the accessories. Video game stuff is easy money, especially now that I discovered the auction house. The market is hot right now, and the prices realized at auction have been quite seller-friendly from my experience.

Here’s a few stragglers that missed the first electronics shot. The Gameboy Advance still works too, as far as I can tell those things never die.

I found a few things digging around those bags, including a 5 British Pound note and a bit of junk silver, which was worth about 10$ for scrap.

I also found a Pandora bracelet with two silver charms. The leather band is pretty worn out, but the charms are usually good for around 20$ a piece.

Lastly, I found some Canadians stuff, including four signed cards …

… and a mini stick that looks to be signed by Carey Price. These are currently listed in an auction ending on Sunday, here’s the link if you’re interested in this kind of thing!

There’s plenty more to share from last week, including two jewelry boxes with partial contents, but I’ll save those for a future post.

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