flipping – Things I find in the garbage

Precious metals

February 13, 2025 garbagefinds11 Comments

Well, we finally got a big snowstorm here in Montreal. It’s looking like the final tally will be around 40cm in just one day. So, I’ll be snowed in until the streets are cleared, which hopefully will be largely done by early next week.

Fortunately, I made sure to get out for some trash runs before the inundation. 2/3 were pretty uneventful, but the other one provided my first exceptional finds of the year. I hope to share them here soon enough.

In the meantime, here’s a couple of small one-off finds from last year which I discovered again recently while organizing my garage. One place on Van Horne put out a bunch of junk in the summer, including a bunch of old clock parts. I found a few fun pieces in a little wooden drawer, including a solid silver pocket watch case, a sterling silver chain, and a gold St Christopher medal.

The scrap value is probably around 150$, but all three pieces could probably sell at a bit of a premium.

Another stop in NDG produced a bundle of jewelry, which if I remember right was mixed in with some food waste. Gross, but worth it. I ended up stashing the most noteworthy pieces away until I had time to take photos, which I guess is now. Everything is a precious metal, except the airplane which I just thought was cool. Of course that small, 14k gold pocket watch is the most valuable piece there. I forget how much it weighs at the moment, but at current prices I’d guess it’s worth about 400$ in scrap, give or take. The blue enamel is very striking as well. Unfortunately, it’s missing pieces and doesn’t work, so its destiny is likely the scrap pile.

With gold approaching 3000 USD per ounce, it’s getting more difficult to get any premium for gold beyond scrap value, except for more extraordinary pieces. Unfortunately, I rarely find those in the garbage. I deleted most of my gold jewelry from eBay, because the prices I set (which people were already not paying) were surpassed by the weight value, and it makes no sense to sell any gold piece below that. Gold prices tend to do well in times of uncertainty, so I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Just a quick one today! I’ll get to this week’s big find soon enough, but first I might post more “garage finds.” I need to give closure to more of yesterday’s finds, which have been kicking around my storage … sometimes for years.

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 these links, I get a small cut of the profit!
2. “Things I find in the garbage” on Facebook
3. Follow @garbagefindssells on Instagram (this is managed by a friend, I’ve quit Instagram for the time being)
4. Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com. Note that I really suck at keeping up with my email.
5. Help support the blog, or just buy me a coffee! PayPal link below.

Kananaskis pt.1

January 3, 2025January 3, 2025 garbagefinds16 Comments

I hope everyone had a nice holiday season! I took it pretty easy, and spent some quality time with friends and family. I didn’t do much trash picking, but I think I’ll get back into it next week.

Today I’m showing you some old finds from the “archives” at my garage. This folder came from an interesting spot in Cote St-Luc, probably around 3 years ago.

This household had German roots, and apparently knew a German (or multiple?) who was detained during WWII and spent time at various Canadian POW camps. The folder contained various sketches from the period, most of which related to the war and their time at the Kananaskis internment camp.

Apparently the role of the camp changed over time. Before Canada even joined the war, they “began arresting and detaining known and suspected enemy sympathizers” to be interned at the camp. Given the history of WWII-era Japanese internment camps in Canada and the US, it’s fair to wonder if some of these people were actually threats. Later on, the camp began housing combatants and those with strong “pro-Nazi” sympathies. See the link above for a more thorough history.

All that to say, it’s very possible that these early prisoners were not hardened Nazis. One of them appears to have immigrated to Canada after the war, which indicates to me that he was probably just a German civilian who got caught up in that mess.

Anyways, this is a drawing of the Kananaskis hospital, dated 1939-1940 by Paul Schinz.

Here are some unsigned drawings. The ones below look to be wartime drawings, which is interesting.

Finally, I found several of these cartoons. They’re by a guy named Otto Ellmaurer, who if the birthdate is correct, would have been a teenager while detained at this camp. Some of them are kind of funny, zoom in for a closer look!

It looks like the Canada War Museum has a copy of all these, plus a few extra that I don’t have.

Interesting stuff. I haven’t really looked into their value yet, but I assume I can make a few bucks from these. The cartoons seem to be pretty rare, and the drawings are obviously one of a kind.

I have a bit more stuff from this spot to share. Maybe I’ll try to get those photos done tomorrow, and close the book on this years-old spot.

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions? My main one is to finally start writing that garbage picking book that I’ve been talking about for years. There isn’t much reason to put it off any longer, and it’s not like I don’t have the time. If you have any topics you’d like to see covered in a book, please share in the comments!

Quick turnaround

September 19, 2024September 19, 2024 garbagefinds10 Comments

Last week’s trash haul was one of my best in a while. While there were no “omg” finds, there was lots of quality junk that I was able to liquidate at two yard sales this past weekend.

In front of one house I found a whole bunch of framed art and prints. There were several bags full, and also some bigger ones leaning against the pile. I picked out about 30-40 of the nicer frames, many of which sold for between 3-10$ each at the sale.

I took pictures of a few favourites, which I didn’t bring to the sale. The pair of very (late 50s?) framed dancers above are iconic enough to be worthy of listing on Facebook Marketplace. Below are a couple of nice pieces of art, both of which are by someone named “HJ Doran.”

I also saved a bunch of cookbooks, including some old collections of Montreal restaurant menus (in book form), and a bunch of nice chandelier crystals. These went to my Instagram seller, and sold pretty quickly for decent money.

On Tuesday evening I picked up this walnut dresser, which I was able to quickly flip for 120 plus a delivery fee. Maybe I could have gotten a few more dollars for it, but when it comes to big stuff I prefer to move it quickly rather than have it clutter up my storage.

On Wednesday night I ended up in St Michel. That run was a bit of a dud, at least until I found two vintage ammo crates filled with records. Unfortunately, the record sleeves were damaged around the bottom, maybe from the big storm a month or so ago. However, most of the records themselves were in very good condition, protected by the inner sleeve or perhaps divine intervention. Also, a lot of the records were jazz, which isn’t as common as some other genres (like classical), and are fairly sought after. I put them out at the sale, and within a couple hours 75% of the records (and the crates themselves) were gone, and I made around 200$ or so. As a result, that ended up being a worthwhile outing as well.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck this week. My van also needs a bit of work, so I’ve taken it easy on the trash runs. I’ve been waiting on one semi-necessary part for almost 3 months now (apparently Kia is not great when it comes to supplying less common parts), and on Tuesday the occasional squealing from the back became a constant squealing that, even if not dangerous, annoyed me greatly and induced feelings of rage. I also noticed that I had a headlight out, and have been driving with a nail in the tire for a couple of months (hoping for this other part to arrive so I could do both jobs at once), so I made the call to get those latter things fixed on Monday. I’ll still have to wait for that part though, which is just absurd at this point. All in all, this car (and my repair shop) have been very good to me, so I blame Kia’s management for the inconvenience.

Since we’re on the topic of quick flips, here’s a few other furniture pieces I saved recently. This art deco dresser/wardrobe sold for 150 (iirc) to an Instagram follower. I was able to drop it off the day after I found it, so it never even made it to my storage… which was good because getting it in the car by myself was a feat of strength of its own.

Vintage dressers seem to be easy to sell, even when they’re really basic like this one. It sold via FB for 60$.

The market for these old round kitchen tables isn’t so hot, though. I’ve been holding the bag on this one for over a month now, and I’m not getting much interest even at 60$. Fortunately the legs come off so it doesn’t take up that much space, but I might pass on similar tables in the future (considering how much effort it took to get it in the car… this thing is heavy!).

I’ll finish off with this unusual find. I wasn’t sure about picking it up because, speaking of heavy, this thing was solid cast iron and weighed probably 80 pounds, give or take. Sometimes I pick these kinds of random things up and end up regretting it, when I end up putting the item back on the curb and get nothing for my efforts.

Anyways, thanks to Google Lens, I was able to identify it as an old dough divider, the same brand as seen here. However, it was pretty dirty, a bit rusty, and the mechanism seized up after I brought it to my garage. I listed it at 250$, an aspirational price, but was pretty happy when someone eventually showed up and offered me 100$ for it. It needs a lot of work, so I’m just glad it went to a better home. And I feel no regrets, because it only took a few weeks to sell, and it sold for a decent price.

I was planning to take a weekend off from regular yard sales, but my friend Louis (who runs ArcMtl as well as Expozine) talked me into doing a combined sale this weekend. He’ll bring records and maybe some art books, and I’ll have a selection of my usual stuff. The plan is to be at the usual 4100 Coloniale spot on Saturday, from 11-6pm.

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. Help support the blog, or just buy me a coffee! PayPal link below.