Month: July 2026

Summer pt.1

garbagefinds8 Comments

Hello all. It’s been a busy month. My mom moved to the city in early July, and the family has been helping her settle in. I’ve also spent some more time in that hole, maybe I’ll post a few more finds from that next time. Moving day wasn’t all that exciting, but at least I got some exercise from biking and walking around the neighbourhood. I did find a few change dumps, and a mixer thingy I have to find a cable for.

 

In the spring, precious metals were near all-time high prices and seemed to be popping up pretty much everywhere. Now that the prices are lower, I’m not finding as much, which I think goes to show that there’s not much logic to what ends up in the trash. I still found a bit though, including a Tiffany baby rattle and a flimsy 10k gold bracelet at one spot, a tiny Tiffany heart and a couple other bits at another, and then a little bag filled with someone’s scrap silver elsewhere.

My favourite spot might have been this dumpster. It’s always a bit of a struggle to dig around in these things, but this one wasn’t too bad. I picked up a bunch of dishes, old jars, and miscellaneous junk.

I enjoyed saving this, which I think is a variety of a “God in a bottle.” Apparently these were popular in the Irish community, and this person did indeed appear to have Irish roots. Apparently it was made in Montreal in December 1938, and the images are covered in celluloid. It might have been made to hold holy water, but there isn’t any evidence anyone ever put water inside. I’d be afraid to now, since the celluloid appears to be peeling up in places (also, the cap doesn’t seem to open). Regardless, it’s a neat artifact, one I might keep for my own collection.

I also scrounged up some smaller treasures. There is a bit of silver and a tiny amount of gold in the middle box on the right. I was hoping that mesh bag was sterling, but it was not. Inside the plastic rosary case was an old Blarney pin.

Otherwise I have a few spots I’m currently keeping an eye on – I’ll save finds from those for another post. A friend was able to quickly flip a brand new Amazon quality espresso machine for 100$, and three of those Amisco stools for 200$. I was excited about the spot that produced those near-mint Christian Dior sunglasses, but I haven’t seen anything there since. The pottery is from that dumpster, just a bit of what I saved but the only pieces I had time to photograph.

And now for something completely different

garbagefinds11 Comments

I’ve always had an interest in hidden treasures, although I never made much time for it. I got a basic but good metal detector for my 19th birthday (I think, that was an eternity ago), but only really used it a few times. I had other priorities.

Recently, I got interested in trying it again. My old metal detector didn’t seem to detect much of anything anymore, so I left it on the curb and bought a new one late last year. Winter came early though, so I didn’t have a chance to really use it until this year.

At my new place my landlords/friends live on the ground floor. They were doing some gardening and yard work, which seemed like a good excuse to bring out the metal detector. We mostly dug up old rusty nails, but there was one reading coming from fairly deep which got me digging further. It was just a piece of old sheet metal, but I was also digging up pottery sherds and old glass. So I convinced them to let me dig a hole, peddling tales of finding a cache of gold coins to get them excited.

(We all knew this was mostly a joke though – the odds of finding gold in this part of the Plateau were probably worse than the odds of winning the lottery. Most of the people who lived in this part of town originally moved there to work in or around the nearby limestone quarry).

The metal detector quickly became useless, because most of the interesting finds were not metal. In the first picture you can see a bit of a glass bottle poking out, in the second was the biggest pottery sherd I managed to save.

These were all my finds after maybe 4-5 hours digging. I ended up spending probably like 18-20 hours in that hole overall.

And here’s a display of some of my finds after all that digging. There was a lot more of the relatively common items (ie: nails and random rusty iron/steel, plain white porcelain, bones and relatively clear glass), but it wouldn’t have been photogenic. Below are some of my favourite finds, including unusual coloured glass, sherds of transferware and stoneware jugs, and a whole bunch of clay pipe fragments. I’m able to date one of the clay pipe as being made between 1805 and 1891 (most likely close to the latter), because it had the markings of William White of Glasgow, whose factory operated in that time-frame.

I also enjoyed finding the buttons, a single brass ring, and a clay marble (I found another, in red clay, after taking this photo). However, the top finds in my mind were the segments of a broken bisque doll, and an odd piece that seems to be dated 1902. There is a horseshoe motif and some faint writing underneath, which I’ll try to decipher with wax paper at some point. I think it is bisque as well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the rest.

At first I was actually hoping this was the location of an old outhouse, as sometimes those can produce fun finds. But in the end, I’m not sure this was even dump digging. Instead, I’m pretty sure this was just a spot where they dumped some landfill a long time ago, maybe to even out the yard or something. With privy digging or dump digging, you’d expect to find more of each item in the same place, but this stuff almost seemed like it was tossed in a blender before being dumped. I’d find one piece over here, one over there, and never anything that seemed complete.

It also made digging pretty difficult. That’s the main reason I think I’m done with this particular hole. The quantity of finds has dried up, but also some of the layers in there are basically like rock. My hands in particular felt pretty worn out … it was good exercise though! I got about 3 feet deep in places.

However, it was a pretty fun experience, and I think I got an interesting hands-on look at what garbage looked like in the early 1900s. Maybe I’ll expand on the experience in my book. Regardless, I look forward to digging more holes in the future in the hopes of finding a different kind of trash than I’m used to.

As for regular trash, the July 1 moving day was pretty mediocre but at least I got some exercise biking and walking around. The trash otherwise hasn’t been super bountiful lately, but I’m still finding some things. Sometimes the summer is a little slower because people are going on vacation, visiting friends and family and whatnot.