The photographer

I went out for a walk on one of the first truly warm days of the year. I was headed for my storage space, although I forget exactly why. This being a blog about finding things in the garbage, you might not be surprised to hear that I spotted a huge pile on my way there.

I think I was the first to stop and look. Some guys were still bringing new things out when I got there. I asked about bugs and they indicated there were none. However, whoever owned this stuff struggled with cleaning, and probably did a bit of hoarding too. Also, they were a smoker, although the stink was pretty moderate compared to some places I’ve picked at.

I sifted through many bags filled with grimy junk in hopes of finding a buried treasure. I spent about three hours digging, and made a little pile (on the left in the photo above). At some point it was big enough that I carried it to my garage and then came back and started a new pile. About 1.5 hours in, some others started showing up and poking around. I talked to some 20 something about why people throw out photos, and another guy who was poking around handed me a camera bag (with camera) that I had missed.

The guy was definitely into photography. I saved a couple albums, most of which are well composed nature shots, many probably taken in the park facing the building. More importantly for my finances, I saved two Nikon cameras from the early 2010s (including the one that guy handed to me). They were very well cared for (unlike a lot of the other stuff), and in near mint condition apart from the moderate cigarette stench. I tossed the bags, straps, and other components that would be hard to de-smell, and gave the cameras to a friend who knows a lot more than I do about them. She was able to freshen them up and test them, and she’ll sell them in exchange for a cut. I should make some decent money once it’s all said and done, though it may take a while.

My favourite find though was this ring, which I found near the end of my three hours of digging. It was amongst a bunch of junky bric-a-brac at the bottom of a big black bag. It’s got Soviet hallmarks, a hammer and sickle with the number 583, which was the Soviet standard for 14k gold (elsewhere, 585). The ruby is almost certainly lab grown, apparently they were in style there back in the day. The raised setting is pretty cool, and makes this a fairly flashy cocktail-style ring. It looks like it was only lightly used, if at all.

Based on eBay’s sold listings, I think this is probably worth about 1k CAD, give or take, but I’m not in a rush to sell it. For now it’s still a cool reminder that trash can be very good, even when it’s messy and smells like Export As.

In other news, I made a little website. Introducing garbage.news, a way to promote my yard sales without clogging up this blog, or making people log into Instagram or other websites. It’s a very basic page that I hope is pretty straightforward, just put in your email and hit subscribe! If you don’t have a WordPress account, it appears to make you a basic profile that is linked to your email, but you don’t have to use it. Anyways, sign up now and I’ll send out a test post in the coming days to see how it’s working. It did well in beta testing (my mom and sister basically, ha ha) but depending on your email provider they may go to “spam” or “social” – if so, I think if you move them to your regular inbox, they’ll go there in the future. Please let me know here if there are any issues in signing up or otherwise.

On a side note, when I chose that domain, I was trying to find something that would be easy to remember. But I also thought it was a good investment gamble. I figure there is a non-0% chance that someone might want to buy the garbage.news domain someday!