dumpster diving – Things I find in the garbage

The finds I crave

March 11, 2023 garbagefinds6 Comments

This haul was from the summer of 2020 (my “bumper crop” year), so these pictures have been collecting virtual dust for some time now. Better to post them late than never though, right?

I’d really love to happen upon a pile like this right about now. I’m still picking up loads and loads of books, but there haven’t been many finds of note in the precious metals / jewelry department for some time now.

I remember finding a bunch of coins the first time I stopped here. That was a good omen. In the box were more coins, including some already rolled pennies. Literal easy money.

Otherwise, I picked up some of the usual quality junk …

… and some bits of paper ephemera. My favourite piece here is the letter written to Eaton’s in 1960 complaining about a defective dishwasher. That bridge joke is… let’s go with “dated.”

What made this place notable though was the jewelry and the precious metals. I don’t remember all these pieces after two plus years, but that mechanical pencil was silver for sure.

There were a few bits of silver and gold in here too, most of which also appear in the next pic.

That watch was gold for sure, though it was busted up and not good for much but scrap. That religious pendant next to it was also gold, as were the two earrings to its upper right. There are several silver pieces here, including a little enameled Order Of The Holy Sepulchre medal which might still be kicking around in one of my drawers.

These were my best finds though. The rings boxes alone are decent. The one on the left was sterling, and the Birks one was quite beautiful as well, all done up in deep blue leather with gold accents. I forget what they sold for, but I’d guess they went for around 75-100$ each. The stainless steel one was probably worth around 40$ as well.

The rings inside weren’t much good, but that doesn’t matter when they’re gold. The two in the middle were 14k and made by Birks, but the stones had been forcibly removed making the rings worth nothing outside of their weight in gold. Fortunately, that was still a few hundred dollars. The one in the box on the left was sterling I think (and missing a stone). The earrings, which were stored in that little yellow pouch along with a note, were my best individual find. They were solid 18k gold, and I recently (finally) sold them for a bit above their scrap value (650$).

Looking at this reminds me how great 2020 was for finds. 2021 and 2022 weren’t much good, but here’s hoping 2023 is better, and that I happen upon another nice gold haul soon! There’s nothing quite like finding gold.

I do feel like the trash has been a bit better recently. The books are still flowing, but I also have a few other spots I’m keeping an eye on now. Spring is definitely in the air, though I don’t feel like people are doing much cleaning yet. It’s still a bit chilly, and a fair amount of snow remains.

Links

1. My eBay listings. Sign up for eBay (Canada, US). Search for something you want / research something you have (Canada, US). — These are Ebay Partner Network links. If you create an account or buy something after getting to eBay from here, I get a small cut of the profit! —
2. “Things I find in the garbage” on Facebook
3. Follow @garbagefinds and @garbagefindssells. Note that someone else runs the latter.
4. Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com. Note that I really suck at keeping up with my email.
5. Donate to the blog. It costs close to 500$ a year to maintain (no ads, domain name, storage space, etc) which ain’t cheap. Otherwise, it’s nice to get a few bucks for coffee, food, or gas!

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 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.