February 2025 – Things I find in the garbage

Kananaskis pt.2 / snow week

February 20, 2025 garbagefinds6 Comments

Well we got another big dump of snow here – about 70cm of snow in 5 days! Garbage collection across the city has been cancelled for the week, which has never happened as long as I’ve lived here. Just as well, because I wouldn’t have done much exploring anyways with the streets like this.

That seems like a good time to finish up with the stuff from this spot. I now have one less collection of old finds on the shelves of my garage, although this was one of the smaller ones.

I saved a whole bunch of postcards from this house, most of which were from the WWI era. These ones are known as real photo postcards, or RPPCs. Basically, a photo printed on postcard paper. Sometimes they can sell for a lot of money, usually when the subject is unusual. I doubt mine are worth a lot, but they’re still cool and blog-worthy. Zoom in for a closer look!

Some had writing on the back, but it was all written in German so I have no idea what was said.

These ones are a from a little later, featuring the Wehrmacht – the Nazi Germany military forces.

I also found some negatives from that era. There’s around 30-40 of various subjects, including some boat flying a Nazi flag.

Back to circa World War I. Here’s a bunch of regular postcards. These are very much from another time, which is an obvious thing to say given that they’re about 110 years old. Zoom in for a closer look!

There were a few little cards too, which I’m guessing came from cigarette packs.

Here’s a few miscellaneous photos and etc. I think that patch is probably from the 1936 Berlin Olympics – I also found a program from that Olympics, but it was in pretty rough shape.

I decided to list the military ones in three different lots. I doubt they’ll sell for a huge amount, but we’ll see what happens. You can see them on my eBay, the bidding is due to end Sunday night.

As for the stuff from part one, it all found a good home with a researcher and I got 500 big ones for my efforts. That included all the prisoner of war related stuff from my last post plus this batch of POW mail. I consider that a pretty ideal destination for these artifacts.

I’m not sure what my next post will be about yet. Old finds? Recent finds? We’ll see!

Links

1. My eBay listings. Sign up for eBay (Canada, US). Search for something you want / research something you have (Canada, US). — These are Ebay Partner Network links. If you create an account or buy something after getting to eBay from these links, I get a small cut of the profit!
2. “Things I find in the garbage” on Facebook
3. Follow @garbagefindssells on Instagram (this is managed by a friend, I’ve quit Instagram for the time being)
4. Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com. Note that I really suck at keeping up with my email.
5. Help support the blog, or just buy me a coffee! PayPal link below.

Precious metals

February 13, 2025 garbagefinds11 Comments

Well, we finally got a big snowstorm here in Montreal. It’s looking like the final tally will be around 40cm in just one day. So, I’ll be snowed in until the streets are cleared, which hopefully will be largely done by early next week.

Fortunately, I made sure to get out for some trash runs before the inundation. 2/3 were pretty uneventful, but the other one provided my first exceptional finds of the year. I hope to share them here soon enough.

In the meantime, here’s a couple of small one-off finds from last year which I discovered again recently while organizing my garage. One place on Van Horne put out a bunch of junk in the summer, including a bunch of old clock parts. I found a few fun pieces in a little wooden drawer, including a solid silver pocket watch case, a sterling silver chain, and a gold St Christopher medal.

The scrap value is probably around 150$, but all three pieces could probably sell at a bit of a premium.

Another stop in NDG produced a bundle of jewelry, which if I remember right was mixed in with some food waste. Gross, but worth it. I ended up stashing the most noteworthy pieces away until I had time to take photos, which I guess is now. Everything is a precious metal, except the airplane which I just thought was cool. Of course that small, 14k gold pocket watch is the most valuable piece there. I forget how much it weighs at the moment, but at current prices I’d guess it’s worth about 400$ in scrap, give or take. The blue enamel is very striking as well. Unfortunately, it’s missing pieces and doesn’t work, so its destiny is likely the scrap pile.

With gold approaching 3000 USD per ounce, it’s getting more difficult to get any premium for gold beyond scrap value, except for more extraordinary pieces. Unfortunately, I rarely find those in the garbage. I deleted most of my gold jewelry from eBay, because the prices I set (which people were already not paying) were surpassed by the weight value, and it makes no sense to sell any gold piece below that. Gold prices tend to do well in times of uncertainty, so I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Just a quick one today! I’ll get to this week’s big find soon enough, but first I might post more “garage finds.” I need to give closure to more of yesterday’s finds, which have been kicking around my storage … sometimes for years.

Just down the road

February 2, 2025February 2, 2025 garbagefinds26 Comments

It’s been a classic Montreal January thus far – fairly cold, and a moderate amount of snow. I haven’t felt too motivated to get out there. Fortunately, it’ll be over by the time you read this post. February is always a little better, and by the time March comes around, you’ll start to see glimmers of spring.

My attention span has been shot lately, but I have put a bit of effort into cleaning up my random junk in the basement. It feels like a good task for January. I’m not sure when I’ll end up moving from my current spot, but it’s inevitable that I’ll move at some point … and when that time comes, it’ll be nice not to have so many loose ends down there.

Half of it is my own personal stuff. I finally tossed my high school yearbook, which was ruined in a flood several years back. Some things are just garbage! The rest are former finds – some things I wanted to keep for my personal collection, some things I had trouble researching, and other things I just didn’t have time to deal with. I’ve listed some of these items on eBay, put others in the yard sale pile, and kept some favourites for myself.

What do I collect for myself? Well, that’s a topic for another day. As is the potential impact of the orange guy’s tariffs on my garbage business.

This haul came to me around mid-December, not too far from home.

This old leather envelope held a bunch of old photographs, including four tintypes.

Apparently the heyday for the tintype was the 1860s-1870s, but some were produced up until the 1930s. Probably the only way to identify the exact time period would be to look at the fashions of the subjects. Zoom in for a closer look, and if you have any insights let us know in the comments!

The rest were carte de visite style photos, most of which were taken in Quebec City and Montreal.

There were more photos elsewhere. I picked out a few favorites to share here. That photo of the plane looks pretty old. Anyone know anything about that?

And then there was a bit of quality junk (as I like to call it). I saved a nice sterling silver rosary, a small silver funnel, a little hand clip that may also be silver, an old Zippo, some doodads for the yard sale bin…

… a couple fish-shaped pens, a Louis Marx budget bank, an old bottle of Eau Sauvage;

… and three bronze medals, one of which I sold for 50$.

They aren’t as old as they say, but they’re still nice re-strikes that probably date to the early 1900s.

Otherwise, one of these people worked for different local media stations. I found a few mementos, including two signed images of “Les trois Menestrels” and another of a different band I’m not familiar with.

Most interesting was a press pass from Expo 67. I’ve found a couple of these now – the other is still in quarantine (since late 2023, a little excessive most likely, but better safe than sorry) because it came from an apartment with bedbugs. These seem to be fairly uncommon, so they are likely worth something to a passionate Expo 67 collector.

That’s all for now. I’ll share some more finds soon enough!