Tag: recycling

Part one in a million pt.12

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Of all the “old stock” I had sitting on my shelves for years, all that’s left is one little box that fits under my bed. It’s mostly old photos and paper ephemera, which I find extra hard to document. I figured it might be a little less overwhelming if I dealt with in in small batches, so here’s some random bits that stood out.

I’m thinking these photos date from the 20s to 30s. I’ve found a lot of x-rays over the years, but these four dental shots are probably the oldest I’ve seen.

Otherwise, we have a car that looks to have belonged to a 1920s eccentric …

… a 23 year old begonia tuber (is that old for a begonia?);

… and a photo of a solar eclipse dated August 31 1932. Photos of eclipses from this era aren’t particularly common, so they seem to hold a bit of value. I think I’ll keep it in my collection though.

And then we have a few old paper things, like this Cox Gelatin(e) recipe book and Egyptian dream book …

… a piece of “Ozone Paper,” which looks to be some late 1800s quackery;

… a grocery flyer (apparently Montreal used “four letter two digit” phone numbers from 1925 to 1958 – I’d guess that this one is from the 40s);

… and for those who like potty humour, a stool sample summary from 1948. I am a fan myself, and plan on sticking this in an 8×10 frame once I find one that suits it. This would be great to put on the wall in a bathroom.

Winter has come early this year, or it at least feels that way. Trash picking is a bit less fun, but I still go out fairly regularly. It’s also a bit less bountiful, but I’ve had one particularly good run each of the last two weeks, which helped to make up for the other meh days. Otherwise I’m feeling inspired to write more often, so that bodes well for a potential book.

In business news, I decided to end my eBay store subscription. It just wasn’t worth the extra expense with sales so far down. The new link is here. With all the regulatory drama I’m not listing as much stuff now as I did in the past, but I still prefer to use it for certain items.

In with the new

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It’s been almost a month since my last post! I’ve been a bit busy, having done five yard sales since then, as well as some visiting with family, but I’ve also had a bit of writer’s block.

I’m still adjusting to focusing more on new finds than old. Fresher finds can be a bit more complicated. For example, one recent score includes an object that could theoretically be traced back to whoever tossed it (very unlikely, but possible), and I don’t want to hinder the current flow of trash there (or have some other picker poach the spot). These kinds of issues aren’t a concern when it comes to things I found years ago.

For another recent score, I have a cool shot of the trash pile, but the spot might (doubtful, but who knows) be too recognizable, so some similar concerns emerge. I was also thinking I could save that tale in my theoretical book … but by the time that is done we’ll all have largely forgotten about the stuff anyways. And the story isn’t so much about the finds anyways.

I think I’ll share the latter finds soon, and the former once the folks are done tossing their old junk. Today will just be a general update, plus one find.

For the yard sales, as I said earlier it’s been a busy stretch. Labour Day is now my favourite yard sale day of the year. With the students moving to the neighbourhood right around that time, pretty much all of them need stuff for their new apartments and have nothing better to do because it’s a holiday. I did both Sunday and Labour Day Monday, and probably cleared out about half of what I had there, between sales and my purge afterwards.

I’ve done a few more since then, but I’m now at the point where yard sales are providing diminishing returns. Most of my bigger ticket items have sold, so I’m left with smaller sales and old stock. That’s exactly where I want to be this time of year, because winter is coming sooner than most would like and I want to be “out of stock” by then.

Otherwise, with the confusion and cost surrounding the US duty/tariff/tax situation, I quit shipping eBay items to the States altogether. I’ll revisit it when there’s a bit more clarity or sanity, but as things are now it’s just too much of a headache to figure out. And now Canada Post is on strike, which means that eBay sales of any kind are more or less impossible at the moment. I guess I could figure out how to use Fedex or UPS, but I think I’d rather hope the Canada Post situation gets resolved – CP is generally cheaper and easier to use from my experience. I’ve been fortunate enough recently that I don’t need the eBay income all that desperately. In past years this situation might have been very challenging for my finances, but as of right now it’s just a mild inconvenience.

Otherwise, here’s one notable find from a couple months back. I stopped at an apartment building and found the bins filled with neat old junk, including this one bin that contained a bunch of old photos. I also found some fun yard sale stuff, a very small amount of gold and silver, and a letter written & signed by a former Prime Minister.

Wilfred Laurier was PM between 1896 and 1911. The history seems to check out. For Anglos, he’s asking this HG Carroll guy to replace Jean Blanchet as a judge temporarily. However, Blanchet died later in 1908, so the temporary post became permanent. A pretty random bit of history, but it’s cool to see Laurier’s signature and the Prime Minister’s Office letterhead. I doubt it’s worth a whole lot, so I might just keep it for my personal collection.

Otherwise, I’m planning another sale for tomorrow (Sunday) at the 4096 Coloniale spot from 12-6 pm. Late notice I know, but come by if you’re interested! There won’t be too many more this year.

McGill move-out 2025 / The hoarder

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Well, another university move-out day has come and gone, which means that it’s now summer (if only in my mind). I’m sure I wrote about this last year, but these days I treat the day(s) like a treasure hunt. I’m not interested in clothes and food and books and whatnot. I’m after the gold and silver jewelry, and to a lesser extent coins.

By focusing on one class of item, I can quickly move from pile to pile and not get overwhelmed by the massive quantities of junk. Of course, I’ll pick up other things if I happen upon them while searching for the treasure (this year: lamps, a nice framed page from some 1800s newspaper, quality pencils and markers, etc.), but it’s more fun when I don’t take it all that seriously.

Given the demographic (very young people, who may or may not come from money), a lot of the jewelry is terrible. I’d say about 95% is fast fashion junk that was garbage from the day it was made. But inevitably, some nicer stuff gets mixed in.

Here is my reduction of all the jewelry, to just the precious metals. On the top left is the gold. That 14k ring is worth about 200$ for scrap, which was probably about half of what I earned over the two days. The rest is silver, or gold plated silver. The middle bracelet is Italian silver, and the bottom one is Thai. One of the links of the latter was stretched out making it “broken”, but I was able to fix that pretty easily.

All in all, not a bad haul. I spent around 8 hours biking around in the sun on what were two very nice days, and probably found about 400$ worth of stuff. There are certainly worse ways to make a living.

Otherwise, a hoarder house is starting to toss stuff again after a long pause. I say hoarder, because I can’t imagine why a single household would need over 100 bars of soap. And this was just from one night! The week before, I found a few other packs, and I’m currently using soap I found there last year. I also found 9 unused Brita tap filters, and the recycling bin is often full of every magazine this person ever owned. But it’s all very clean, so it’s fun to dig through. Hopefully, they continue the purge for my benefit. I already have enough found soap for five years at least, so the plan is to sell these at yard sales or give them to friends.