Tag: antiques

Summer pt.1

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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.

Odds & ends

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Sorry for the lack of posts, it’s been a pretty blah month on the mental health front. I guess February sucks for a lot of people in general, but this year is particularly bad as a few good friends have moved away and I’m more alone than I’ve ever been. Plus, it’s a lot harder to meet new people when you’re 34 going on 35, it’s the middle of winter, you struggle with depression & anxiety, and there’s nothing going on in a never-ending pandemic. The garbage has largely sucked too, and I’m meeting an unusual amount of angry people with good garbage that apparently really needs to go to the dump and not somewhere useful for some reason (I’ll get more into that in my next post). I’ve found a few good things, but it’s hard not to wonder about “career path” in these trying times, though I’m sure things will turn around eventually. I’m very much looking forward to spring, but that’s still a ways off.

On the plus side, I finally started using Chit Chats Express for most of my eBay shipping. I heard about it years ago, but for a while their only location was out in Ville St Laurent, and driving out there would offset any savings. Now they have a drop-off location on St-Denis, which is much more convenient. I’d say that I save 5-10$ on most packages, and sometime more than that. Other times it’s more or less the same, and only once was the Chit Chat’s rate a bit higher (for shipping a big Ham radio to Washington State). It also offers tracking on low-value packages that I normally wouldn’t track, due to the extra cost (for example, a 25$ poster to the States costs 6-7$ with tracking, when Canada post would be 12-13$ with no tracking or 18-19$ with – I don’t usually have a problem shipping low-value items without tracking, but it’s still nice to have for both me and the customer).

Anyways, I would recommend them anyone who ships things on a regular basis. I’ve saved probably 150-200$ just in the couple months I’ve been using it, and they have lots of locations across Canada now it seems. Please use my referral code if you do, that way you’ll get 5$ free and I’ll make a few bucks when you start shipping (I believe it’s 10 cents per package in the first month of you using the service).

In other good news I figured out how to get the old WordPress editor back (apparently just needed a “widget”), so now I can quit whining about that. Also, I decided to bring back the Paypal “donate” widget (which stopped working for some reason) because that’s what most bloggers do. Most say “buy me a beer,” but you can also help with blog expenses. It costs about 450$ a year to pay for the WordPress stuff (extra storage space for pics, no ads), and I wouldn’t need as big of a garage if I didn’t blog. Plus the time it takes to make these photo arrangements. Of course I’ve kind of sucked at this blogging thing for a while now, but hopefully one day my brain will cooperate again.

Anyways, this apartment building produced a nice haul in early January. Not much since… but I still check on it.

 

With apartment building trash you’re bound to find a lot of crap, so I only stop if the garbage pile is interesting. That vintage card table set and mirror was enough to get me to stop the car, and then I discovered that the bags were full of kitchen & dining wares. This short video shows you the sound a bag full of kitchenwares makes. The sound and look of the bags helps me differentiate the good stuff from the bad, the latter of which comprises the vast majority of what we call “garbage.”

All in all I picked out about two big bags worth of stuff, as well as the card table and mirror. There was some breakage, which is common when people throw ceramics and glasswares into bags and then drag them to the curb, but plenty of quality stuff survived.

There was lots of silverplate, but some was pretty worn out and best scrapped (the plated brass and copper is worth decent money at the yard). That serving dish at the top right had its original glass insert, which is pretty uncommon (at least with trash silverplate). That odd looking thing at the bottom right is a vintage “cake comb.”

I found a few things in protective Birks drawstring bags. The nicest piece is probably that cake server on the bottom. Based on my research, it’s a solid silver piece made by Hippolyte Thomas in France sometime in the 1850s. You can see (and zoom in on) the hallmarks below. I don’t find stuff that old particularly often, so that’s fun. It’s probably worth around 150-200$.

A couple of other favs include this early mid-century Pillivuyt porcelain pot, which managed to escape its trip to the curb without any damage. I sold it via the @garbagefindssells Instagram (managed by someone else, but I post occasionally) for 40$, which I think was a good deal.

Also nice was this old decanter with a silver top. Below are the hallmarks, which show that it was made in Birmingham, England in 1911, probably by John Grinsell & Sons. Haven’t figured out a price yet but I’m thinking it’s worth around 100$.

Anyways that’s all for now. Hopefully I can get another post up soon. It’s not for a lack of stuff, just a lack of brain power.

Part one of a million pt.9

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Some of you know the story with this spot by now, but here it is in condensed form if you’re new: very multigenerational house starts tossing stuff after a century plus of rarely doing so. This was definitely one of my favourite all-time spots, and I feel safe now saying that in the past tense because I haven’t seen any new trash there since the early summer. It was a great run – I found quality junk here nearly every week for like a year – so I can’t complain. Anyways, I need to post pics or get off the pot as they say. I have lots still to share, and a decent sized shelving unit full of stuff still to deal with.

Anyways, I won’t spend too much time on each picture. Here’s a load of wool blankets I found here, which did fairly well at auction. None were super fancy, but all were nice enough to sell.

These folks seemed to like celery a lot. I’ve never seen celery “flakes” before, and can’t imagine how they’d be used.

Most Canadians are probably familiar with Habitant pea soup, which is still one of the better canned soups out there (and pretty cheap as well). I sold this to a friend who plans on opening a restaurant one day, and who’ll probably use this as a display.

Metal scissors are always easy to sell, and there’s a couple of interesting ones here as well. The one on the left with the little wheelie thing in the middle are old buttonhole scissors. These ones are marked “H. Cromwell Criterion – Korn’s Patent” and I was only able to find two others on Google. The pair at the bottom with the stitching wheel were made by Pribyl Bros (if you can tell me what they sold for please do!).

I found lots of old books here.

A lot of what I have left to sort are really old photos and paper ephemera.

I’d never seen batteries like this before. I think they were probably used for photography sometime around 1950. They probably contain a lot of lead and other nasty stuff, so it’s good I saved them. I sold them to another junk oriented fellow who plans on turning them into some kind of industrial art.

These antique Persian tiles were pretty busted up, but fortunately I found all the pieces.

I saved a whole bunch of old films in varying condition.

I gave / sold (we have an informal arrangement) them to a local archivist who knows how to deal with film that’s in poor condition.

A lot of them were close to 100 years old, so it’s likely they contain footage that’s impossible to find elsewhere. There were a few mass produced cartoons in there as well, which aren’t so irreplaceable.

There’s a pretty good market for old flags from my experience. This Union Jack was marked “British Made” and in great condition for its age. I sold it on eBay, I think for 150-200$.

I found a lot of silver here, but the most valuable piece was probably this William Spratling Mexican silver & obsidian necklace which dates to the late 50s or early 60s. I remember it was missing two chunks at first, and then a week or two later I found one of them. Unfortunately, I never did find the other. Regardless, I listed it on eBay for 350$ and it sold very quickly. Spratling is a sought-after designer, and the missing chunk didn’t have obsidian so it might not be too hard for someone to reproduce.

Usually when I have an interesting “spot” I make a file folder on my computer devoted to the related photos. Right now I have 14 folders, several of which are getting pretty dated, so I want to clear out that old stock and stay more on top of the fresher junk. I’ve said that before, but now that people are selling stuff for me I feel like I have more time for blogging.