Looking back on my posts about this spot, I think I undersold it a bit. I remember being so busy with other trash, that it kind of got lost in the shuffle. But it was truly a unique experience. I spent about 8 hours that first night digging through the dumpster, and when that was gone, I spent maybe 3-4 hours a night for three nights meticulously digging through the recycling (which was mostly just more of the same garbage), in addition to doing my regular runs.
I remember that some of these bins were home to rats. I’m not scared of rodents, but they did surprise me a couple of times. Occasionally I’d set a whole bin horizontally to encourage a resident rat to leave, so I could dig through the rest without its company. I was slightly paranoid about that disease you can get from rats, but I lived to tell the tale.
Also, in the middle of all that, I had a yard sale planned. Here’s how the van looked after that all-nighter. I sorted through a bunch of it during the sale, setting aside the blog-worthy, the eBay worthy, and the research worthy to bring back to my garage/office.
Here’s a table I made just of yard sale type stuff. There was a lot more of course, but there’s only so much I can do when it comes to documenting my finds.
Case in point. A lot of those suitcases were stuffed with clothes. Nothing mind blowing (ie: Chanel), but nice vintage stuff like this colourful Korean silk shirt that caught my eye. I find it hard to take good pictures of clothing though, so I rarely try. But clothing (especially vintage clothing) has been a solid money-maker for me in recent years, one I mostly ignored early in my career. Complete ballpark guess, but I probably made over a grand on the clothes alone. And of course I found that 534$ wrapped up in a blanket.
I also saved a whole bunch of books here. The old guy was an engineer, and there was lots of urban planning stuff, but also some interesting philosophical works. Elsewhere, these kinds of books might not sell very well, but I’m near the university so these genres are fairly popular. Here are just a couple of the books I saved.
Lastly, I saved a whole bunch of stamps. Lots of big blocks, which apparently aren’t worth all that much most of the time. I sold a box largely full of old Iraqi stamps for 100$ at my yard sale though, so that was good. A friend sold some of the others, and I still have some kicking around (the bottom three). I doubt there’s anything incredible, but they are cool. I used to collect stamps when I was a kid, but now I’m more into kitschy animal figurines.
I have a few more things for the final part of this series, and also I’ll give you an update from some of the best finds from previous posts.