In a little over a month I’ll be moving to a new place. For the first time ever, I’ll live alone, although my landlords will be my friends who lives downstairs which should cut down on any feelings of isolation. Regardless, I have a lot of work to do over the next little bit. Fortunately, I’ve been planning for my own personal “move-out day” for some time. I purged a bunch of old high school and college era junk over the winter, and moved a lot of non-essential junk from my personal collection to the yard sale pile. I think my move will be relatively easy, knock on wood.
A lot of the things I find come from people moving. I’ll be tossing some stuff for sure, but I’ll be doing it in a way most likely to reach the people who might want it. For example, I put an old carpet on the curb last night, and left a note: “no bugs, but probably 10 years of dust.” It was gone within a few hours. In a few days, I’ll be putting boxes of free crap on the curb. Having lived here for nine years, and gone through countless roommates in that time, a lot of this stuff is not even mine. It’s not worth donating (I’ve seen what thrift stores throw out), but maybe someone who passes by will want some pencils, some random candles, or bits of fabric.
I’m hoping that I’ll feel a bit more creative living on my own. Maybe I’ll finally start writing that book I’ve been thinking about for years!
Anyways, here’s the 2nd to last part of this series.
I saved a lot of photos here, which I reduced to some favourites for blog purposes. Some of these are quite old. The one with the car is probably from c.1970, and I just find the perspective kind of unique. There’s also an old 100 Armenian Rubles note from 1919, which seems to be worth about 20$.
Some miscellaneous items. I sold that little chess board through Instagram. The photo frame could be unmarked silver, but I find the test results confusing. I’ll show it to my scrap guy next time I’m in.
I found a book which was a compilation of all the Baghdad College yearbooks from 1951-1955 (if I recall correctly). I’ve tried selling vintage yearbooks in the past, with modest success. A few sold for around 50$ each, but most sat on eBay for years before I finally threw them in with the yard sale stuff. However, this has five different years in it, and Baghdad College seems to have been an interesting school. At this time, it was run by American Jesuits, and apparently a lot of the students were from the Iraqi elite. There are some notable alumni, but I don’t think any of them are recognizable to the average Westerner.
At top right is Loris Chobanian, an American-Iraqi-Armenian composer. I’m not sure people are running out to buy yearbooks with him in them, but who knows. I think I’ll give eBay a try here.
The guy who lived here was an engineer who seemed to be pretty skeptical of nuclear energy. I found an old “Nuclear Waste,” as well as some letters to the editor on the topic. My stepdad was a anti-nuclear proliferation activist around this time period, so I probably find this more interesting than most. I also found a “Today” magazine (I think it was an insert to the Gazette) which had my stepdad on the cover, but I’m not sure where I put it!
I saved this interesting piece, which looks to have been a necklace. It’s made from silver, as well as silver coins that look to have been hammered flat. It’s hard to make out where they come from, but I think they are probably c.1950 Iranian rials. In this condition, it’s probably not worth much more than scrap, but it’s still a hundred and some dollars of scrap.
Finally, the extra piece of jewelry I forgot to add to my last post. This has no hallmarks, but it tests as 18k gold. My bet it that it was custom made, maybe back in Iraq or Armenia. The beads appear to be bakelite. Unfortunately, the links were getting a little fragile in places and a couple broke as I was handling it. So, its destination is the scrap pile. However, at 32 grams, it’s a very good haul. Even assuming each bead weighs about 1 gram, it’s a nice haul. You can do the math on my preferred gold value calculator.