Uncategorized – Page 4 – Things I find in the garbage

The cat pee house / the cow

March 3, 2023March 3, 2023 garbagefinds10 Comments

For a few months in the fall I was excited to visit a spot on the curb that I referred to as the “cat pee house.” As you probably expect, a lot of the stuff here reeked of cat pee, which is up there along with tobacco smoke for smells that ruin otherwise quality junk. Needless to say I passed on the loads of bags filled with fabrics, but I held my nose and went digging when the kitchenwares and ceramics made their way to the curb. That stuff is easy enough to clean.

Altogether, for all my digging I saved about a medium-size box of glassware and ceramics. Most was yard sale stuff, and there were a few things for Instagram like a cute giraffe planter and a weird egg pile ceramic.

(FYI, if you want bonus garbage content, keep an eye on my Instagram accounts! Lots of stuff never makes the blog, but you can see some of it there… and no need to buy anything, you can just window shop. Links below).

One standout was this Moorcroft tea set. Unfortunately there is damage to each piece (left to right – cracked lid, cracked lid, repaired handle, albeit nicely executed) but the actual canister and teapot pieces survived damage-free. They’re probably worth something, but I haven’t looked into it much yet.

My nicest find was likely this old enameled Ekers IPA beer tray. It’s hard to find out much about these guys, but it seems like they probably haven’t been around since the 1950s. These are most often used for display pieces now, and this one is in excellent condition (the stains cleaned off very nicely) so I’m going to aim for something in the 300-500$ range. That auction site claims it was made in the 1920s, and they might be right, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was made in the 30s or 40s either.

I was checking out this spot for a while too. No cat pee, just a decent flow of quality junk. One day, I happen upon this massive canvas. I was expecting the usual landscape scene, but was surprised to see a much more unusual subject.

It was a huge cow! A Hereford to be precise. This painting is close to 6′ wide, and maybe 4.5′ tall (just guessing) and I had to take it out of the frame to get it in my van. If I still had my old car, I would have had to strap it to the roof and hope for the best because there was no way this painting would have fit into that thing.

Anyways, I love it. It’s now a centerpiece in a spare room at the apartment, and other people appreciate it as well. I have to wonder about its history though, as a gigantic cow painting is not the kind of thing you’d generally hang in a home. If you look closely, you can see drill holes in the frame on the sides near the top, and also on the bottom near the sides. My theory is that this was likely used as decoration somewhere commercial, perhaps up on the walls at a livestock auction? If you have any theories, let us know in the comments! The artist appears to be “E. Denuit,” but that name is a dead-end on Google.

Otherwise, my recent finds have mostly been books, books, and more books (still). The books are good though, thankfully. It’s finally March though, and spring is near. At the very least, that means more people moving, and more people trashing.

Links

1. My eBay listings, Sign up for eBay (Canada, US), Search for something you want / research something you have (Canada, US) – FYI these are Ebay Partner Network links, so I make a few bucks if you sign up for an account or buy something after getting to eBay using these links
2. Facebook page
3. Follow @garbagefinds and @garbagefindssells (selling account, operated by someone else) on Instagram
4. Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com – note that I can’t fulfill most requests for items, many are already gone by the time they are posted here.

The Lens

February 20, 2023 garbagefinds18 Comments

I finally started using this Google Lens thing after hearing about it from my followers. For instance, I occasionally ask for help identifying an object on Instagram, and people would then send me Google Lens results in their replies. Eventually I clued in that it was a useful tool (it takes me a while to figure these things out sometimes). So today I’ll share three objects that this new tool helped identify.

I picked up this ceramic vase in Park Ex amongst boxes full of kitchenwares in the fall of 2022. I could tell that it was pretty old, but I struggle to describe these things (“old vase with blue and black pattern??”). Researching it would have been very difficult in the past.

(The vase had a sticker with someone’s name on the bottom, which makes me think it was inherited at some point, and “master stone” written using some kind of marker on the inside).

Thanks to the Lens, I was able to identify some relevant keywords (Qajar dynasty [Iran], Persian) and was linked to very similar pieces, like the vase at the bottom left. That one purports to be from the 18th century, though I wouldn’t be surprised if this design was made later than that as well. Either way, this seems like a pretty close match. I hesitate to pretend I’m an expert because I used the Google, but based on what I’ve seen I’m thinking this vase is worth somewhere between the few hundreds and the several hundreds.

Lots of these hard-to-research things end up sitting on shelves in my storage for years before I figure out what to do with them. I picked these up in Outremont, along with someone’s old coin collection and other quality junk, in maybe 2017 or 2018. I think I posted them here, but I can’t find the pics now. Needless to say, they’ve been kicking around a while.

They looked old, but I never did find any similar pieces in my brief research (in retrospect these ones are easier to describe than the other, given their unusual shape). I’m sure I would have figured it out if I have spent longer trying, but “there’s always more garbage” and I got distracted with newer finds.

As it turns out, Qajar dynasty/Iran/Persia are important keyword here yet again. Also, “tri-sided” and “fritware” (I’ve never heard of that kind of -ware before). The guys at top left are trying to sell theirs for 480 AUD, though from what I’m seeing you can find them a fair bit cheaper. If those guys are right about their description, these vases date to around 1900.

Finally, I always thought this platter I found in late 2018 was unusual, particularly the look of the glaze on the bottom. It’s been sitting around the house for a while, because I never had any luck finding a comparable piece online. Queue the Lens.

Thanks to this, I now have “French” “Faience” and “Rouen” keywords to work with. According to various sources, this platter was probably made in the early 18th century (though you always have to take these product descriptions with a grain of salt, because all it takes is one person describing it as such for it to become a “fact” on the internet). Anyways, the guys selling the one at bottom left are asking for 744$, but I’ve seen others in the 300$ range which I think is probably the more realistic price – maybe less if you wanted to sell it quickly.

So, I would definitely recommend you check out this Google Lens thing if you haven’t already. I think you can only use it on your cell phone, but maybe there’s a similar tool you could use on the computer. It also does translations!

Part of me dreads the day when this technology becomes too advanced and ruins the magic & mystery of finding something unusual. That being said, I don’t think we have to worry about that yet. Google Lens still comes up empty on a lot of things I research, so there’s still plenty of mystery out there… for now.

The book tossers pt.1

February 11, 2023February 11, 2023 garbagefinds24 Comments

If not for this spot I’d barely have any finds in 2023. Thankfully (for me at least), these guys just keep curbing recycling bins full of books on a near weekly basis. This has been a near constant phenomenon for about six months now, though it happened occasionally even before that – I first stopped here for a big pile of trash way back in 2021.

It’s funny, because from the street there’s no indication whatsoever that this blue bin would be filled with anything but the usual tin cans and whatnot. I myself wouldn’t ever have stopped for it, if not for the fact that I found cool stuff here previously.

Sometimes, trash picking can feel kind of magical.

This is a decent sized recycling bin so the books are piling up in my garage. These are just the ones I want to research more, or feel the need to sequester for now. Others go straight to the yard sale bin, or occasionally back to the curb.

A lot of the books in this picture are from sets, so I have to figure out if I have a complete set, keeping in mind that another load of books comes nearly ever week and thus a currently incomplete set might become complete with time. I just recently completed a thirty book set of Encyclopedia Britannicas from the early 1900s for instance – I found the first 27 months ago, and then another two and the final book more recently.

That might actually be a nice score. I know the market got flooded with encyclopedias and a lot of them are pretty much worthless, but the old Britannica sets do quite well.

Anyways, I figured that today I’d show you a few of my favourite individual books from this haul, all of which I found relatively recently.

I’ve found several old books about Montreal, which are always fun and easy to sell due to local interest. This one was written by a guy named N. M. Hinshelwood and was published in 1903. It seems to be hard to find original copies – most of the ones I see in my research are reprints or those “print on demand” books that are becoming more common. The only original from that list of 36 I linked to above is priced at about 50 USD, and there’s one other on eBay for about 75$, though there’s no sold prices that indicate whether or not those are realistic prices. You can see some pages that relate to our current season below.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. I figured this “Complete Book of Fortune” was a good find right away, and indeed it seems to sell for 100-200$. It was published around 1935 (no date, but includes a “birthday calendar” for 1936) by Associated Newspapers Ltd. At 640 pages, it is certainly very complete and discusses topics ranging from palmistry to the “science” of phrenology. There’s a few extra pics below, and some more in that link.

Published in 1999, this is one of the newer books from this collection. The cover was unassuming, but it looked nicely made so I did some research and discovered it was a gem. It’s one (signed) copy of 175 from the regular edition of Inishbream by Theresa Kishkan. The key factor is probably that it was published by Barbarian Press, a “fine press publisher” based in Mission, BC, and features fancy paper (my simplified version of what’s described on the second picture, lol) and woodblock prints. It sold pretty quickly on eBay for 700$. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for books by this publisher going forward.

Finally, you all seemed to like my late 1700s almanacs, so I assume you’ll like this liturgical book from 1675.

It’s written in Latin (I think), so you can kind of make out some words. The content seems to relate to the Roman Ritual, but I don’t know much about that. I’m hoping you guys can help me out with this one. I don’t know much about value yet, besides finding that other liturgical works from this time have sold for between a few hundred and several hundred dollars.

This is one of the oldest books I’ve found. Just a bit older was this one from 1610, though it was in worse condition. This one is in pretty good shape considering it’s nearly 350 years old!

These book tossers are truly absurd. I hope for my sake (both from an entertainment, as well as financial perspective) that they continue tossing out great, easily flipped, and often antique books for a while yet. Either way, I definitely have more blog-worthy stuff from this spot to share here in the future.