Spring pt.2

Astronomical spring is almost over. The season was pretty good to me, although things have been a bit slower (but still decent) as of late. Moving day is coming up, and although the phenomenon has rarely been a great source of trash for me, I have some new ideas for this year that I’ll be trying out.

One spot in a nice part of town was very good to me over a period of a couple of months. I saved lots of yard sale stuff, and some decent electronics such as digital cameras and a Nintendo DS. However, I was pretty busy at the time so I only got around to taking pictures of the jewelry, most of which came in two hauls over a few weeks. The first box on the left is the silver from the first haul, the middle the silver from the second, and the right is the gold from both.

The silver jewelry was pretty cool, and included a couple of Tiffany pieces (the skeleton key pendant and the classic Elsa Peretti heart pendant) and a Links of London necklace. That one pendant on the left is huge and ornate. All in all there was about 250 grams of silver (including stones), and a little over 6 grams of gold. Most likely, it belonged to teenagers or recently former teenagers who don’t know the value of their possessions.

I’m pretty sure this stuff was tossed by someone famous, but trash pickers are bound by professional ethics laws so I’m not telling. The sports cards were high quality and never opened, they made me around 300$ at auction. The jewelry there is all silver or white gold. And there may be a trend where people are now throwing away unlocked iPhones. Maybe now that you can transfer your info to a new phone just by bringing it next to the old one, more phones are being factory reset than in the past. I posted about an iPhone not long ago, found an unlocked 10 elsewhere, and then this 13 Pro Max. There were some cracks on the back glass, but was otherwise in fine condition. I sold it to a friend for 230$, which is about what I would have gotten from that local company I’ve started using to sell relatively new cell phones.

This one house was a one-hit wonder that I had high hopes for. On the first day, I salvaged a bunch of yard sale quality stuff, including some nice if unexceptional pens. I also saved a near-perfect vintage c. 50s or 60s Canadiens wool sweater. This was during our playoff run, so I did an eBay auction and it sold for 100$. I also found my first ever silver bar, a 1oz by Johnson Matthey for Scotiabank. I had to cut it out from the plastic to take a closer look, even if that might devalue it slightly in the eyes of some nerds. I was hoping for more bars, but I think this one just got overlooked. A couple weeks later I found a bunch of 1976 Olympic coin set boxes, but they were all empty.

In the random ephemera category, I found an old stock certificate for a Brooks Steam Motors Ltd, which from the sounds of things was an early automobile scam. Almost 100 years later Nikola would pull a similar trick, but with electric cars. The certificate is probably worth a little bit, but I’m thinking of getting it framed and put on my wall.

I also really like the New Lotus Cafe restaurant menu. This was a Chinese Restaurant in Montreal, and presumably it was designed around Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.

And lastly, a few other miscellaneous finds. I’m pretty confident the pieces on the top left are ivory. The heart has an unmarked 10k gold loop, and the bracelet has a 14k embellishment with a nice looking red stone. In completely random one-off piles, I found a gold pin that relates to dentistry somehow, and a 1976 Olympics participation medal. It’s made of copper and seems to be worth like 150$ bucks, just as a collectible.

I’m trying to do some work on my book. For now the progress is slow, but sometimes things can evolve quickly. So I have a bit of an absurd question that might help me on one chapter, which is: why don’t you become a professional trash picker like me? I know there are many reasons not to, I just want to hear them!