Lucky Monday

Posted on by garbagefinds

I’ve been pretty lucky so far this year. I’ll have to save some of my stories for the book I hope to one day get my head into writing, but I’ll definitely tell you about my lucky Monday from a few weeks ago. I had plans on going out in the morning, but I had a tough time getting moving that day. The clock struck 11am, which is usually a bit too late to go out hunting during a morning pickup, but on this particular route the trash often gets picked up a little later, so I decided to go out anyways.

My first stop was a recently sold house with a fair sized trash pile out front, which from my experience tend to be good spots for finds. One bag from the bin contained two old jewelry boxes, and a couple of other bags held a bit more.

As is most often the case, the boxes had been pillaged before being tossed. However, as is also often the case, there were some treasures left behind for the local trash picker.

For example, this tangled clump of jewelry contained one nice 14k gold chain, and a couple of decent costume pieces.

All in all I saved nearly 12 grams of gold jewelry, which at current melt prices is worth a bit over a grand. That 18k gold tie clip was probably the most valuable piece. I also saved some silver, a few decent watches, and some coins.

Those two silver bracelets were both pretty busted, but they were quite large and hefty, so they were worth about 100$ in scrap. That Swatch is kind of cool, as is the mechanical YSL watch which still runs. Unfortunately, the vintage Timex Snow White watch does not.

It was a nice day, so I decided to go on a downtown adjacent route that tends to get picked up pretty late. I stopped at this unassuming pile, and found just one interesting bag. It held some … personal accessories (I’ll let you use your imagination), as well as a few bits of jewelry.

The highlight there was that top chain, which was branded “Fibo” and hallmarked as 14k gold. The little heart was also 10k gold. The rest, was either silver or gold filled. All in all, the roughly 9.5 grams of gold was worth about 800$.

So, that was a nice morning run! If I could find upwards of 2k worth of trash every day, I’d be a rich man. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy most of the time.

Spring is finally here, and I’m looking forward to university move-out day shenanigans which should keep me busy next week. Here’s hoping the weather cooperates. It would be nice to find another gold score, like the 18k Roberto Coin necklace I found during the festivities two years ago.

14 thoughts on “Lucky Monday”

  2. hello- love to receive your messages and the finds that u come across, it is wonderul that people still toss out things for people to treasure.. love it.. take care and looking forward to your next find..

    1. I have the same necklace with the green stone in the second picture. It is from the 1970s.

  3. The cat was a nice find, too! Do you often find neighbourhood cats interested in what you’re doing? I saw a couple of attractive pieces of jewellery in that post. I’m glad you did so well this time out.

  4. Great finds! About the Snow White watch, usually the winding stem broke, which might be an easy fix. It might be worth listing.

  5. Incredible finds! You probably made more money than the person who cleaned out that house and tossed all of the precious metals into the bin.

    Always love your posts.

  6. Finding items to scrap are a huge boom to our adventures, we scored a box of silver flatware, it include a punch and soup ladle, $2,100! We have not brought in our gold scraps yet. Lucky you, worth getting out of bed for!

  7. Fun Post Marty, Nice looking lot of costume jewelry. The Snow White Watch is still worth $20-5 on eBay. Perhaps this group of your followers should start a thread (Reddit?) of everyone’s finds. Love the stories. I was walking in my grocery store parking lot and stopped to pick up a thin gold flat piece of metal in a C shape. It was a gold hoop earring that had been run over! in the same parking lot years before, I found a pile of pieces of a jade Good Fortune (ironic) bracelet. The jeweler removed the gold from the jade and I got $180.00!

  8. Excellent haul! I was going to make a comment about the cat but someone beat me to it 🙂 Still waiting for some pics and description of that fabulous jewelry find that you teased in your April 9 post.

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