Tag: e-waste

Week of the iPods pt.2

garbagefinds27 Comments

Later that week I happened upon a small pile in Outremont which contained a bit of older tech stuff. I saved several PS2 controllers, an old Apple Airport Extreme, an Apple keyboard and four iPods.

The four iPods brought my total for the week to eight, which is definitely my all-time record. While I think the first ones were thrown out because of a move, I’m not really sure why these were tossed. Maybe Marie Kondo had something to do with it! As for value, these 4th & 5th generation iPod Classics still have some value despite being over a decade old. They all have 60gb of storage, a relatively high capacity, and should sell for between 40-60$ each.

That spot also provided a bunch of sports games for PS3 & XBox 360, a few of which were never even opened. Sports games depreciate a lot quicker than other games, but this collection still netted about 30$ after fees at the auction house. Easy money!

That week was also good for jewellery boxes. The first came from this pile in Nouveau Bordeaux.

It was a nice box in its own right, a Japanese import probably from the 60s. Inside was a music box and a magnetic ballerina that would rotate on the glass. It sold for 20-some dollars at auction.

The contents were clearly pillaged, but there were still a few bits left for me.

Most of my profit came from the three broken bits of 14k gold in the middle, which if I remember right earned me about 80$ (I recently did a scrap gold run). Otherwise, I saved a religious medallion, a miniature Cretan dagger that’s probably a hairpin, a pair of Japanese earrings, and a key fob from Thursday’s restaurant on Crescent.

Better yet was this busted box I found the next day in a richer part of town. The contents were much less picked through, and I salvaged a few great items.

There’s two gold pieces here, including a 10k gold and pearl ring by Birks and a 14k cameo brooch. To the left of that is a nice turquoise brooch – it looks like this one purportedly made by the Zuni of the southwestern United States. It’s probably unmarked silver, and I’d bet that the donkey pendant is unmarked silver as well. I think the pocket watch is 800 or 925 (sterling) silver, though I haven’t yet figured out its hallmarks.

Here’s some closeups of the finer pieces. Overall, they should earn me several hundred dollars. This was definitely one of my best jewelry hauls in some time, but hopefully there’s more coming in the near future!

Otherwise, I brought my first big collection of e-waste to the recycling box recently. I lost track of how much e-waste I salvaged last year, but this year I should be less busy and more able to keep a running tally. In this picture is 4.68kg of electronics, most of which were broken, missing pieces, or not worth selling. I also recycled about 1.1kg of batteries, with most of that weight coming a MacBook Pro battery.

I’m curious to see how much I can recycle over a full year! I can only do so much, so I prefer to focus on cell phones and other small electronics. Laptops too, when they turn up.

That one week was pretty good, but I haven’t had nearly as much luck recently. I did make a good sale though, which I’ll tell you about in an upcoming post.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much done with winter at this point. Here’s hoping the warmer weather is coming soon! Garbage picking is a lot more fun in the spring and summer.

Links

1. Facebook page
2. My eBay listings, Sign up for eBay, Search for something you want / research something you have (I’m a member of the eBay Partner Network so I make a bit of money if you buy things [even if they’re not mine] or sign up for an account via these links)
3. Help me pay off student loan debt / Contribute to the blog
4. Follow me on Instagram

Night of the sterling garbage pt. 1

garbagefinds18 Comments

I’ve had good luck finding silver lately. There was that plate from last post, and also a great collection of silver jewelry from about a month ago that I have yet to share.

The good luck continued last week, and on one of my runs I found notable quantities of silver in three different spots. I’ll share the finds in three different posts, with the quality of the silver increasing each time.

This spot has been interesting the past few weeks. I’ve had to sort through a lot of junk to find very little, but the trash is interesting enough to keep me coming back. There’s been lots of worthless tech junk, stuff that’s old enough to be obsolete but not old enough to be collectible. I saved some fashion watches that might sell for .50 or 1$ at a yard sale, and a few shirts that actually fit me pretty well.

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Fortunately, this little footed dish should make me a bit of money.

I researched the stamps on the bottom, and found that the bowl was made in Cairo in 1980. The silver purity is 90%, so it’s not technically sterling (which is 92.5% silver) but it’s close enough right? It’s worth about 50$ in silver scrap, but might be nice enough to sell on its own. I’ll keep an eye on this spot going forward, but these people seem to be generally good at not throwing away anything of value.

Elsewhere, I came across a bag in NDG with a bunch of old vacuum tubes inside.

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I cleaned them up and threw away the ones that were obviously busted. Now I have to figure out whether to sell them as an untested lot on eBay or go through the hassle of testing them all. Some vacuum tubes go for a lot of money, hundreds or even thousands depending on the type, but I don’t think these ones are particularly valuable (perhaps in the 5-15$ range, if working). Still, that’s not bad considering how many I have. If you have any tips on testing or selling old tubes, let me know in the comments!

I found this pin a couple weeks ago in Cote St-Luc. It stayed in the car for a week before I got around to bringing it inside and looking it up online. I discovered that it was made for the Montreal Beavers of the long defunct Continental Football League, a short-lived team that operated only for the 1966 and 1967 seasons. I’d never heard of the Beavers or the (other) CFL previously, so finding this pin was a bit of an education. I couldn’t find any other pins like it online, so it might be relatively uncommon as well. Continental Football League stuff is fairly collectible, and I’m guessing that this pin will net me between 30-50$.

I keep going back to that place where I found the old tabloids from the last post and the finds are as junky and dusty as ever. I usually find a few things, like this little depression glass dish, but overall it’s been a real slog. Who knows, maybe it’ll pay off at some point. I met the guy tossing the stuff and he seemed nice enough, he just asked me not to make a mess.

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I like saving vintage garbage-related ephemera, so I took these old garbage bag bags that I’d guess were made in the 80s. Maybe one day I can give them to a museum of garbage. I found no reference to “Big John Plastics” on Google.

I found this neat Kodaslide viewer somewhere, I forget where exactly. It sells for around 25$, but it might be my new go-to slide viewer because of its cool design and built in light.

I found a good collection of old Commodore computer stuff in Cote St-Luc, which I expect will net me around 60$ …

… as well as a single bronzed shoe. I see these once in a while, and they’re always a fun find. Apparently the bronzed shoe business started in the 30s, and peaked in the 50s and 60s.

Here’s an optometry gizmo I found last week. I doubt it has much value, but it might make for a fun yard sale item.

Sometimes I find electronics that I never knew existed. For example, apparently Sandisk (who I know better as a USB key maker) produces a media player called the Sansa. It’s actually a pretty cool and compact device that also contains an FM receiver. Honestly, I almost overlooked this in the bag, but I guess my brain decided it was worth taking (sometimes, this process is only semi-conscious, especially when sorting through a lot of stuff). This model seems to go for around 50$, so it’s a nice get.

Otherwise, now that yard sale season is over I’m digging through my “to list on eBay” pile and finding some stuff I forgot about. I remember saving this collection of vintage pencils in NDG in the spring and thinking they were cool enough to merit further research. Most are labelled Canadian Pacific or A.W. Faber “Radium” copying ink. I doubt they’re worth a bunch, but I thought I’d auction them off regardless. If anyone has a Worthpoint account they could help me out by looking up what these Radium pencils sold for.

I found some vintage Barbies a little while back, and found them again while going through some stuff I have in the basement. There’s stuff I enjoy researching, like that Montreal Beavers pin, but the value of specific Barbies is not one of them. I don’t generally use auctions, but I probably will in this case as the Barbie market is fairly strong, and it would save me the time of figuring out a price. However, I don’t have them listed yet, so if you have any advice let me know.

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I also brought another haul of e-waste to the recycling box. This batch, mostly old cell and portable phones, weighed just over 3kg, and overall I’ve recycled about 7.3kg of e-waste since I started keeping track earlier this year (not including the stuff I’ve sold for actual money). I like to think that I’m making a bit of a difference, and maybe by sharing this I can encourage more people to think about electronics recycling!

That’s all for now, but I do have a sales post ready to go, and lots of silver to talk about.

Relevant links

1. Facebook page
2. My eBay listings
3. Etsy store
4. Kijiji listings
5. Contribute to garbagefinds.com
6. Follow me on Instagram

Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com. I often fall behind on emails, so I apologize in advance if it takes me a while to get back to you.

Very rich people pt. 2

garbagefinds27 Comments

Part one

Let’s go back to that great haul from a few weeks back, which also produced a bunch of miscellaneous electronics. I saved some nice headphones, the best of which are the Bose noise-cancelling earbuds on the bottom. Bose is a great brand and the earbuds looked almost new. I recently sold them on eBay for 200$. The Beats by Dre at the top right should also make me some money, while the other pair is solid but unspectacular (5-10$ at a yard sale).

The nice thing about rich people junk is that they tend to buy higher quality items to start, so their stuff is more likely to hold its value even after it becomes “obsolete.” That Sony CD Walkman for instance is not exactly current, but it still sells for around 50-60$ because it’s one of the better ones on the market. The mini Sony AM/FM walkman is also surprisingly valuable, going for at least 35$. The antenna inside that thing must be pretty good because the sound is great considering its size.

The most interesting piece is the Sangean DT-200X radio. It’s one of the few radios on the market that can be converted to a “ghost box”, or a device that spirits can more easily communicate through. Basically, by removing one of the circuit board pins the radio can play audio while also scanning the airways. You end up hearing random bits of audio, some of which might sound like someone trying to communicate. I don’t really believe in this kind of stuff, but I don’t mind if other people do. Ghost boxes are hard to find these days, so they often sell for 100$ or more. Originally I chose not to hack it, but once I realized how easy it was I opened it up and got it done. It’ll probably sell for a bit more as a result, and it was good to make sure that it was indeed a hackable model (as Sangeans made after 2012 apparently cannot be hacked).

The Expos radio is pretty neat as well. It’s not particularly good (the antenna probably sucks), but it works and should sell at a yard sale.

I saved two Ti-83 calculators. The Silver Edition model worked but the other did not. I left the latter on the curb in hopes that someone would pick it up and fix it, but I’m not sure if anyone did. The SE should sell for around 50$.

I found a bunch of disposable cameras, some with many shots still left on them, as well as a Canon Ultrasonic camera lens.

That Magellan GPS looks really old, but it still has value because the model is desirable to outdoorsy types. It sells for around 65$. Unfortunately I didn’t find the power adapters to go with the walkie-talkies, so I’ll probably just end up selling them “as is” on eBay. The thing with the screen is an iSonic HD8000 projector, or something like that. I can’t find any info about it online, but I get the feeling it’s one of those things that people sell out of white vans, or pretend is worth a lot of money when it’s not. That at least is true with the iSonic 800HD.

Otherwise, I unfortunately didn’t find any MacBook Pros or iPads. On the plus side, I did find a couple of iPods. Usually I only find the older models, but these were relatively new, from 2010 and 2012 respectively. Neither looked to have been used very often. I already sold the one on the right for 115$, and the one on the left (which comes with a nice strap) should go for close to 100$.

Otherwise, I saved an Apple DVD drive, a few Apple adapters (which sometimes sell for good money), and some other miscellaneous bits and bobs. Overall, I should be able to make at least 700$, and quite possibly a fair bit more from these electronics.

Some of the stuff, like the iPods have obvious value, but a lot of that total comes from things that might not look like much, but are of value to the right person. That’s why it’s always a good idea to look up your finds on eBay’s completed listings to see what they sell for – it’s the best way to learn the potential value of your stuff.

Also, I figure I’d mention again that I’m part of the eBay Partner Network, which means that I sometimes made money when people go to eBay from my blog via clicking one of my eBay links (like the “completed listings” link above, and the link to my eBay listings below). Specifically, I make money if you buy something (not necessarily my items) or sign up for an account after clicking to the site from my page, at which point you can go anywhere via the search engine. It’s not much money, it might be anywhere from 1 cent to 10$, but it does add up. Anyways, consider it if you plan on buying something through eBay regardless. I think I’ve made like 40$ over two years so far, but I haven’t really marketed it that well either.

I have lots more very rich people garbage to show you (from various location), as well as some interesting stuff I found in Villeray a while back.

Relevant links

1. Facebook page
2. My eBay listings
3. Etsy store
4. Kijiji listings
5. Contribute to garbagefinds.com
6. Follow me on Instragram

Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com. I often fall behind on emails, so I apologize in advance if it takes me a while to get back to you.