Tag: garbage

Spring pt.1

garbagefinds5 Comments

I’m going to switch from a monthly format to a seasonal one, because the former requires a bit too much micromanagement (of photos, exact dates I found things, etc). When people are clearing out a house, sometimes I’ll find things at the same place for months on end, so this offers me a bit more flexibility in that regard.

One house (still producing finds!) has tossed a seemingly endless supply of old kid’s junk. The vast majority isn’t salvageable but I’m able to pick some fun things from the detritus, most notably (so far) a Comical Clara wind-up tin toy that seems to be fairly collectible.

Otherwise there’s been a bit of very random stuff, such as a bunch of old Italian communist posters and a 1976 Montreal Olympics flag that just sold at auction for 67$. Hopefully the finds here continue into the summer.

I decided to experiment with a different route a few weeks back, and was rewarded nearly instantly by a recently sold house. Most of the trash is picked up the next morning in this one area, but a little section is picked up in the late afternoon, so often people won’t put out the trash until the next day. However, some put it out at night, and those piles seem to be disproportionately good. Anyways, I found an old yellow organizer with its content, which was mostly sewing stuff but also including some coins, medals, buttons and other quality junk. Probably the most valuable items are a 1965 French silver coin, and a silver medal commemorating the 1935 silver jubilee of George V.

The next week I saved a bucket filled with mostly pennies. I didn’t see anything last week though, so maybe this spot has been exhausted (and maybe I missed some even better finds in the weeks prior).

And for miscellaneous finds, I saved four little sterling silver forks at a one-off spot, and a bag of French Euro coins just down the street. The latter was given out when France was converting to the Euro back in 2002, and contains a little over 15 Euros. I sold them to my neighbour for the face value in CAD. Otherwise, here’s two fun books, one in English and one in Czech.

The Habs game is starting soon, and then I’m going out for trash again. Go Habs Go!

April pt.1

garbagefinds4 Comments

It’s been a busy month. Spring is here, the trash has been bountiful, and I’ve done three sales in the past two weeks (with another planned for tomorrow). There were so many good finds that it’ll take a couple posts to share them, and that’s not including the stuff I’m holding for potential individual posts.

One spot produced boxes full of brand new pottery from China. Over two weeks, I accumulated about 3x what you see above, all of it wrapped nicely in foam and bubble wrap. Some had price tags in yuan on them; the ones that did were priced equivalent to 15-20 CAD each. I’m pretty picky about my pottery, but I thought these were pretty good quality. Nonetheless I was worried that they wouldn’t sell well at my yard sale, as dishes aren’t usually a hot commodity, but I’ve already sold about 2 boxes worth. I also picked up some packaged food which was either not expired or lightly expired, some of which I’ve been eating. I haven’t seen anything here in the last couple weeks, but I’d be willing to take more free food and pottery if it’s offered.

Screenshot
Screenshot

It was a big month for Lego as well. This spot especially – most of the bags were packing material, but a few were stuffed with Lego. All in all I saved about 15kg (33lbs) along with some instruction books, all of which sold for a bit over 200$. At another house, I saved another 8kg or so, which sold for like 182$.

I recently rediscovered the local auction house, the type that focuses on pretty mundane stuff like this. So far, I’ve been pretty happy with the prices realized. I’ll get into that more in a future post, but this strategy turns Lego into “easy money.”

Here’s some of the more miscellaneous finds of the month. That bent mirror was sterling, and contributed somewhere between 100-150 grams (who can remember?) to my scrap pile.

As for treasures, I’ve found a bunch. The second batch was actually from March, but who’s keeping track? The first batch is mostly silver and a little bit of white gold, a reduction from a larger collection, while the second were three pieces inside a slightly busted glass-topped box, all of which were gold.

I guess I’ve also been busy watching Canadiens playoff hockey (or listening on TSN 690 if I want to go out for a trash run). It’s been a fun run so far, here’s hoping for a good game tonight against Buffalo! The city is a lot more fun when the team is contending … and it also helps me sell my Canadiens stuff at yard sales. Anyways, I’m planning to do one tomorrow, and will post the deets soon on my garbage.news announcement page.

The photographer

garbagefinds8 Comments

I went out for a walk on one of the first truly warm days of the year. I was headed for my storage space, although I forget exactly why. This being a blog about finding things in the garbage, you might not be surprised to hear that I spotted a huge pile on my way there.

I think I was the first to stop and look. Some guys were still bringing new things out when I got there. I asked about bugs and they indicated there were none. However, whoever owned this stuff struggled with cleaning, and probably did a bit of hoarding too. Also, they were a smoker, although the stink was pretty moderate compared to some places I’ve picked at.

I sifted through many bags filled with grimy junk in hopes of finding a buried treasure. I spent about three hours digging, and made a little pile (on the left in the photo above). At some point it was big enough that I carried it to my garage and then came back and started a new pile. About 1.5 hours in, some others started showing up and poking around. I talked to some 20 something about why people throw out photos, and another guy who was poking around handed me a camera bag (with camera) that I had missed.

The guy was definitely into photography. I saved a couple albums, most of which are well composed nature shots, many probably taken in the park facing the building. More importantly for my finances, I saved two Nikon cameras from the early 2010s (including the one that guy handed to me). They were very well cared for (unlike a lot of the other stuff), and in near mint condition apart from the moderate cigarette stench. I tossed the bags, straps, and other components that would be hard to de-smell, and gave the cameras to a friend who knows a lot more than I do about them. She was able to freshen them up and test them, and she’ll sell them in exchange for a cut. I should make some decent money once it’s all said and done, though it may take a while.

My favourite find though was this ring, which I found near the end of my three hours of digging. It was amongst a bunch of junky bric-a-brac at the bottom of a big black bag. It’s got Soviet hallmarks, a hammer and sickle with the number 583, which was the Soviet standard for 14k gold (elsewhere, 585). The ruby is almost certainly lab grown, apparently they were in style there back in the day. The raised setting is pretty cool, and makes this a fairly flashy cocktail-style ring. It looks like it was only lightly used, if at all.

Based on eBay’s sold listings, I think this is probably worth about 1k CAD, give or take, but I’m not in a rush to sell it. For now it’s still a cool reminder that trash can be very good, even when it’s messy and smells like Export As.

In other news, I made a little website. Introducing garbage.news, a way to promote my yard sales without clogging up this blog, or making people log into Instagram or other websites. It’s a very basic page that I hope is pretty straightforward, just put in your email and hit subscribe! If you don’t have a WordPress account, it appears to make you a basic profile that is linked to your email, but you don’t have to use it. Anyways, sign up now and I’ll send out a test post in the coming days to see how it’s working. It did well in beta testing (my mom and sister basically, ha ha) but depending on your email provider they may go to “spam” or “social” – if so, I think if you move them to your regular inbox, they’ll go there in the future. Please let me know here if there are any issues in signing up or otherwise.

On a side note, when I chose that domain, I was trying to find something that would be easy to remember. But I also thought it was a good investment gamble. I figure there is a non-0% chance that someone might want to buy the garbage.news domain someday!