dumpster diving – Page 3 – Things I find in the garbage

2022

January 15, 2022 garbagefinds19 Comments

After a lousy 2021, it was heartening to start this year off with a couple decent scores. I haven’t been going out as much recently due to the cold, the curfew, and some indifference (it’s harder to get excited to go picking when you’re having bad luck), but sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

This was last Friday. I stopped here largely due to that Turkish leather bag on the left, which looked interesting enough from the car. There was some quality junk inside, so I took the whole thing, though I eventually left the bag for someone else as it needed some TLC.

Some of my best finds came from the trash can, and were revealed after I removed the top white kitchen waste bag (and dug around a bit).

Here’s most of my take, in one picture. You can have a closer look in the gallery below. I wish I had a better photo of that Indian wooden box at the back left, but the one I took didn’t turn out. I’m wondering if it’s vintage or a relatively recent tourist piece… but either way it’s pretty nice. A friend quickly claimed the Gato Negro (black cat) wall plaque, and the two WWF decorative plates.

This wooden box, made by an artist named Clarence Wills, stored some “junk drawer” type stuff. That’s my favourite type of junk to find, because it’s fun to look through, is small / doesn’t take up much space, and is often partly composed of overlooked treasures. That little wooden lidded trinket box at the bottom right held a few nice pieces of jewelry, which more or less made my day.

The two pieces on the right are gold. The ring is old, 18k white gold and inscribed with the date “1943,” and some other words or names that are hard to make out. It has four small diamonds, but the center stone is missing. Together they have a scrap value of around 300$. The rest of the pieces are silver. That cocktail ring is quite something! It’s about an inch and a half tall.

There were a few other nice pieces in there, like three beaded bracelets, a couple of silver chains (one broken), a Haida brooch, and a necklace featuring a donut-shaped stone & (I think) solid silver beads.

I expect this spot will be a one-hit wonder. I passed by again this week and saw nothing of interest. But I had luck again on Monday in the downtown area, and I’m hopeful that I’ll get a few weeks (or more?) of quality trash from there.

This & that

December 16, 2021 garbagefinds14 Comments

Just posting a few more finds from last summer. This spot provided a fair bit of “quality junk,” but I only took pictures of some of the finer stuff. One day I found a bit of jewelry, most of which was in this black case.

That bracelet was solid gold, which was a nice find because it had some weight to it. Also gold was the pendant (I forget what that design symbolizes… but I’ve seen it before), the broken chain necklace and the metal bits on the beaded necklace. The Givenchy watch has Chinese characters which is fairly unusual, it’ll probably take a bit of time but I expect it’ll sell for a couple hundred bucks (give or take) at some point. The pen was completely empty inside, I thought it was sterling but it turned out to be just plated.

Also nice was this white gold pendant, which I think was originally an antique earring whose pair was lost. The stones were all diamonds, and I think it sold for 200$ (give or take, was a while back now) via eBay auction.

These folks also tossed a bit of silver, including this Seder cup and mini plate…

… and a cute solid silver menorah. The rest of the stuff was plated.

Last but not least is this nice “Boumier ware” set designed by Lucien Boullemier, who was apparently a soccer player before becoming a ceramicist. A couple pieces had been damaged, but repaired in a pretty discrete way. Looking at this picture now, I wish I’d kept a piece or two, the luster was very pretty… alas you can’t keep it all. Or photograph it all – I also found lots of clothes (mostly 80s, and sometimes from the recycling bin), books, kitchenwares, boxes full of brand new golf balls, several pairs of barely used golf shoes, and other quality junk. But eventually the supply ran out, and last I looked the house is still being renovated nearly one year later.

Ridiculousness

November 28, 2021 garbagefinds14 Comments

This year has been a bust, but last year was fantastic. This spot provided some of my best finds of 2020, and just a few days before the New Year.

I feel pretty confident that this stuff was tossed when a kid came home for the holidays and cleaned out their old room. There wasn’t a lot on the curb, but the things that made it there were pretty top quality. I found two Macbook Pros, one from 2010 and one from 2015 (I’m guessing they got a new one in 2020). I finally got around to listing both on eBay recently, and they should earn me around 125 & 275$ respectively. The newer one has a cracked screen, but is still usable. I also had to wipe the hard drives before listing them, but that’s not too hard to do.

Most notable though were the vanity items, particularly the jewellery.

There’s a fair bit of silver in this picture. The most valuable piece was the Tiffany heart tag necklace, which was real and sold for close to 400$. I’ve found a couple of those now, so maybe they’re more popular with gift givers than they are with gift receivers.

I also found a pair of Tiffany earrings, which I think sold for 100-150$ (this is a little while ago now, so I forget exactly). And we’re not even at the best part yet.

Silver is great, but gold is better (at least going by dollars per gram). This person tossed out two solid 14k/18k gold necklaces. The one on the right was made by Quadri, but I spotted some wear and tear and decided to take the easy way out and sell it to my jeweler for its weight in gold.

I still have the one on the left. It’s Italian 14k, and I’ll have to go on a mission to determine who made it based on the hallmarks. I doubt it’s a super well-known designer, but either way it’s very pretty, featuring graduated pieces of yellow, rose, and white gold.

Here’s a couple other gold bits. That ring is 14k (but the stone is just a bead that happened to fit well in that space), and the chain is white 14k gold with a roughly 1/4 carat diamond at the end. If I remember right, that smaller ring didn’t turn out to be solid gold after all.