environment – Things I find in the garbage

Rien n’est beau que le vrai

January 10, 2024 garbagefinds5 Comments

I’ll finish the organizational post another time. This post I’d like to dedicate to Nick Huston, a friend who passed away recently after a fire. We were closest between 5-10 years ago, but I hadn’t seen him in a while, largely because I’m bad at staying in touch (for a variety of reasons). On November 23rd he messaged me about wanting to look through my trash hoard. We chatted a bit, but didn’t make plans, and on December 15th he was gone. He was an unpretentious, goofy, generous guy, and was taken from the world far too soon. He wanted to see my garbage, so here it is bud. This junk’s for you.

This was one of a few intriguing spots I had on rue St-Denis this year. These guys rarely threw out much at once, but there was enough to keep me checking back week after week. My best day was when I opened a bag that was mostly full of food (both wet and dry, so kind of gross), but also contained a box of little treasures.

I like to take pictures of things as I found them. In this case, the box of treasures came with a bunch of sliced almonds. The many joys of trash!

Thankfully, this kind of stuff cleans up pretty easily, and nothing was ruined.

The most unusual object was the “sexographe.” I can’t find any others online, but a few articles discuss it. Apparently it was a tool used to sex chicks, though some people writing about it were very dubious of its functioning, describing Capron as a “charlatan.” It sources an article that sounds like it would have been a lot more in depth, but unfortunately appears to have disappeared from the internet. Based on the font, I’m guessing it was made in the 1900s or 1910s.

The medals were pretty neat. The colourful enameled badge was purportedly made for the 50th anniversary of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, though the only source for that claim is an eBay listing trying to sell it for 299.99 USD. I decided to list mine for 200$ CAD, which I think is probably too high still, but I can always lower the price later.

The 2nd Congress for the French Language in Canada (1937) bronze medal is also impressive. Very art deco. It was designed by Marius Plamondon, who was more well-known for his work in stained glass. They seem fairly uncommon, but I found another one on a coin/exonumia site listed for 150$, so I listed mine at that price as well.

That little pendant is a wax seal. Sterling I think, though I can’t read the hallmarks and haven’t tested it. I don’t know what that emblem is. The boat reminded me of the New Brunswick flag, but then there’s also some fleur-de-lys, a sun, and a castle.

I still have to research the long, flat thing, though it appears to honour those who fought against the government in the 1837-1838 rebellions.

Photos of the relevant reverse sides are below, plus a closer pic of this funny alpaca card holder (?) made using a 1907 silver coin from Peru. If you have any info about this junk that might be of interest, please share your insights in the comments!

One of my final finds at this spot was a reverse glass painting of the Montreal Historical Society emblem. It was pretty dusty, but it cleaned up nicely and I’m leaning towards keeping it myself. It kind of reminds me of something you’d see in a church basement that hasn’t been renovated since 1960 or so.

Anyways, whoever owned this stuff was clearly into local history. It’s a shame it was tossed, but thankfully I was there to save it!

Otherwise, I haven’t figured out what’s wrong with that Paypal donate widget yet. I think they might have changed their system or something. I’ll try to figure it out before my next post, but in the meantime you can send donations via e-transfer or Paypal directly to my normal email – martin.gregory@gmail.com.

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! –Widget currently unavailable–

The all-nighter

September 2, 2023 garbagefinds15 Comments

Things are picking up again. Tuesday nights have been really productive the past two weeks, and Wednesdays have provided some smaller but notable hauls as well. The other days have been hit and miss, though Thursday/Friday came through last night when I came across a massive pile of trash behind an apartment building and spent eight hours looking through it. I think that’s a record for me – I got there at 10:30 at night and left as the sun rose around 6:30 in the morning, with only a Timmie’s tea and muffin break in between to give me the strength to keep going. Someone dumped what looked like much of an apartment, and obviously didn’t put much care into the process. Anyways, I made a few notable scores (and still have a lot in the van to sort through), but that’ll have to wait for another post.

I finally got Covid a few weeks ago. It wasn’t too bad, but still slowed me down for nearly a week. I went on a few garbage runs during, later at night so I wouldn’t see anyone and with a mask on, so I was able to hit up my usual spots and make a few finds.

Otherwise, the university students (particularly the McGill kids) are back in town, so I plan on doing a couple yard sales this weekend hoping to sell them stuff for their new apartments. I should be out at 4100 Coloniale from 12-7 both days if anyone is interested!

Anyways, here’s some more of my Park Ex finds from earlier this year. One of my favourite finds was stored in a dingy ziplock bag, which maybe led to the tossers not noticing it.

It’s a cute 10k gold alarm clock pendant. This thing is smaller than a dime, but it’s fairly thick and hefty, and at nearly 5 grams it’s worth roughly 175$ CAD just for scrap.

These folks owned some cool leather stuff, and were definitely into guns. At one point they threw out a bunch of old bullets and shotgun shells, which seems like a dumb thing to do. There’s a few holsters here, and a couple of ammo holders. The holder on the bottom looks pretty old. I think the leather pieces on the left are used somehow in shaving, maybe someone can explain how they work in the comments.

Another batch of quality junk. That clock on the bottom left is kind of cool and unusual. The sterling comb is obviously busted, but at least the silver is worth 10$ or so. A lot of this stuff will probably end up on my Instagram selling page.

I liked this old clipboard, which was patented in 1893. I’m tempted to keep this, but I never actually use clipboards so I probably shouldn’t.

More quality junk. I love the embroidered “darning bag.” Below is a Mexican silver chain, and a silver cigarette holder that was made in Israel (with an end piece that doesn’t quite match).

This Aiwa Walkman feels like an outlier here. I’m pretty good at identifying the more collectible models at this point, and I was able to sell this for 135$ on eBay even though it doesn’t work. It’s a pretty compact model, which tend to be well-made and less common (and thus more valuable). Walkman values have climbed a lot in the last five years or so.

Finally, we have a couple big silverplate candlesticks, a couple little depression glass (I think) pieces, an a kitschy Charlton glass bottle with stopper. Stuff for Instagram or maybe the yard sale.

I had a couple of great weeks at this spot, but unfortunately I’d bet that I missed out on some great stuff before I found it. Oh well, so it goes. Anyways, hope to see you at a yard sale this weekend!

Sunnyside

March 17, 2021 garbagefinds14 Comments

Quality finds were pretty hard to come by all through February and so far in March, but I expect things to pick up once spring cleaning gets going. Here’s some stuff from late September, when some rich folks moved from a house they’d clearly been in for a while. They were nice, and told me to take whatever I wanted.

This bag interested me because I saw a jewelry/trinket box poking out the side. I brought the whole bag to the car and sorted through it there, partly for convenience and partly because people can be weird about their bags. Most of my best finds were inside.

A lot of it was kids stuff from the 70s and 80s. I brought these games, electronic and otherwise to the auction where they sold for 60$ or so.

I also brought them mementos from a slightly controversial 1986 class trip to the Soviet Union. They sold for 22$ if I recall correctly.

Here’s some sunglasses and watches, the nicest of which were vintage Timex. Nothing super fancy, but they did sell on eBay for a bit.

I saved a lot of miscellaneous “quality junk,” the kind of stuff which is fun for yard sales.

Some of this stuff, like the “thumbcuffs,” were sold on my new Instagram account “garbagefindssells.” To be clear, I got someone else (Katie) to run the account in exchange for a good cut of the profits because I suck at doing that kind of thing. So far it’s gone as well as I could possibly have hoped, helping me unload a certain class of item more quickly and for more money than I’d get at the yard sale or at auction. Also, I like how the format helps to highlight certain items that might not look like much at first glance.

If someone wants to go back in time and beat the 1980 Selwyn House football team I got their playbook!

Lightly used wallets are always a hit at my yard sales, and these ones weren’t even used!

Believe it or not vintage batteries can sell for decent money on eBay. I’ve been stashing them away for a while, and now I might have enough for a lot.

As is often the case, my most valuable finds were some bits of jewelry. I saved a silver Wolf Cubs ring, silver Mount Stephen Club cufflinks, a large silver ring with the word “veritas” and a lion on it, a 14k gold razor blade pendant, and a gold chain with a skeleton key pendant attached. All in all, this spot netted me several hundred to a thousand dollars worth of stuff.

I know I said I would post more, but I’ve been feeling uninspired to say the least. Depressed is probably a better word. I blame February, the weather and the 8pm curfew we had, which our all-knowing Premier graciously extended to 9:30pm yesterday. I suppose the curfew is all well and good if you have a family to go to home to, but for us single folk it can be a pretty isolating experience. Plus, I’m not sure it accomplished anything. Cases are down, sure, but in my opinion that’s due to the other restrictions. Anyone who tried doing grocery shopping before curfew started knows first-hand that forcing people to go to the store (or do anything, for that matter) around the same time isn’t a great way to encourage social distancing. Anyways, don’t get me started!

I look forward to the warmer weather, the later curfew (and, perhaps one day no curfew), and finding good trash again.