I'm a professional scavenger making a living selling curbside garbage. This blog details my finds and sales. It also acts as an archive for things beautiful and historic that would otherwise have been destroyed.
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.
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–
In the past couple months I’ve seen a deluge of quality trash like I haven’t seen since 2020. Thank goodness, because the multi-year lull that was 2021/2022 was getting pretty tiresome. The only thing missing so far is a really nice gold or silver haul, though there have been a few pieces here and there.
I’m still overthinking when it comes to deciding what is worthy of sharing here, which is why this post is so late. People following my Instagram have been a bit luckier, because it’s relatively effortless for me to share “stories” of random junk without providing much context. Here, I feel there has to be a bit more narrative, but I overthink regarding what that narrative should be. Anyways, today I’m sharing another mix of recent and relatively recent finds that I think deserve a closer look.
I’ve had several sales since the one I mentioned in my last post, and this is the first weekend since early May that I didn’t even consider working. It’s nice to have a break, although sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not busy with trash-related endeavours. Regardless, my garage and storage spaces are looking a lot less clogged now, and that makes my work life a bit easier.
One of my favourite recent destinations is a house where the previous owners do not appear to have ever thrown out anything before, but who also kept good care of their things and had interesting tastes. That’s like the Holy Trinity when it comes to garbage. My finds include every Time magazine since 1970s (maybe an exaggeration), lots of old catalogues and sales sheets, other interesting paper ephemera (especially related to travel), lots of toolsy stuff and some vintage toy cars in their original packaging (one of which I listed on eBay).
But my favourite find thus far is probably this great Sanyo boombox, which is in near pristine condition. Based on my early research, I’m thinking it’s probably worth around 300$.
The gold tossers from the last post haven’t been throwing things out consistently lately. I think I’ve only seen trash on the curb on two of five garbage days since my last post. Here’s hoping they get back in the spirit of tossing, because I’m a fan of their brand. Anyways, I thought these glass candle holders/vases were interesting. They’re clearly a pair, but they have slightly different shapes and faults which makes me wonder if they’re quite old. What do you think?
Another interesting find came when I went to one borough’s heavy garbage day. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s not a clock, because there a) appears to be no clock mechanism b) it doesn’t appear to have ever had hands c) too many indices. I asked Instagram, and the best guess I heard was that it somehow connected to a weather vane in a way that lit up the correct wind direction. You can see a bit more of the mechanism below, keeping in mind that the wire attached to what I’m thinking are lights were cut at some point (and we don’t know what they would have connected to). It’s signed by someone named Giroux and dated 1936, and at the very least it’s a very cool folk art type thing. If you’ve seen anything like it, or have theories about what it did, let us know in the comments!
Here’s another find I thought was very pretty. It’s a wall tapestry that needs a little cleaning around the edges, which I don’t think would be too hard to do. I’m guessing it was woven in Mexico, but tapestries aren’t my specialty so I’d appreciate any input you might have! Some of the designs have a mid-century feel, so if I got it cleaned up I think it’d sell for a decent amount.
I was pretty lucky during the move-out season this year. As usual, most of it was the same old crap, though I did pick up some free food and other useful household items. One pile, however provided a find that made all the scavenging worthwhile. Not the 1$ bill (a McGill move-out staple), or the loonies (same), or the Links of London bracelet (very fake), but a necklace in that tangle of mostly junk jewelry at the top right.
It turned out to be a Roberto Coin 18k necklace/pendant, which retails for about 1800$ at Birks. I tested the gold as well as the diamonds, and it checks out. It also just feels like a quality piece. Anyways, this was my best McGill-related find since that MacBook Pro I found way back in 2016.
McGill is pretty picked over these days, and recent waste reduction initiatives have done well to keep quality items from going to the curb (which is good for the world, but not so much for the pickers). My strategy now is to not take it too seriously, but to try to explore places less frequented by other move-out day pickers… and it seems to have paid off this year.
Lastly (for now), here’s a thing that’s been kicking around my garage since the fall. I happened upon a spot where people were clearing out their basement (I knew their neighbours, so I know this as a fact) at the request of their landlords. There were a lot of what seemed to be never used wedding gifts, in their original boxes (think, silver plated dishes and other kitchen stuff), but there was also a lot of ephemera and 70s/80s kids stuff. A few things ended up on Instagram, but most went to the yard sale bin. My most notable find though was this small photo album filled with cool shots of Grand Prix Wrestling stars, including Andre the Giant.
Some of the photos are signed, so whoever assembled this album probably had some connections to help them get backstage. I don’t know much about wrestling, besides the fact that people seems to love it, so I only recognize Andre the Giant. If you could help me identify the other wrestlers, that would be very useful! It would also be cool if someone could tell me where these photos might have been taken, and around what time (although I do know that they’re most likely from the early 70s).
Click the thumbnails below for a better look. To zoom in even more, click the little “i” with a circle around it, then scroll down and click “view full size.”
Now that my storage spaces aren’t so cluttered, maybe it’ll be easier to wrap my head around blogging. Ideally I’d like to at least post every two weeks or so, instead of every month and a bit. Let’s hope!
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!
