Tag: vintage

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.

Part one in a million pt.11

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These finds have been in my garage storage purgatory for five to six years. After moving, I’m tired of having all this junk sitting around not doing anything, so I’m going to try to get it all processed by the end of the year. I’m considering taking a fresh approach to the blog, which would streamline the process a bit and lighten my workload. I’ll keep you posted, obviously.

As for these aging finds, I had one big bin and a smaller box filled with this stuff. I did a cull, and now I’m down to the one big bin. After so many years, some things that once seemed special are no longer. So a bunch of stuff ended up in the yard sale pile, like a bunch of letters from the 1920s, some old postcards, and a few old paintings/sketches that weren’t of any great value.

I’m not going to share anything from the box today. These are all things I didn’t post about, but which ended up in my house for various reasons (and which I saw again once I moved). This Webley Junior 177 air pistol is just really cool looking, I feel like it has a little retro-futuristic thing going on. The other side has a little bit more wear to the metal, but it’s still in very nice condition overall. According to my research, this was likely made in the 30s. Later models had plastic grips, while mine has ribbed metal. These would probably sell for 3-400$ easily, but I’m planning on holding onto it.

I held onto this Telecron clock for years, thinking I might use it once I lived alone. I love the colour and think the design is pretty cute. I have to see if there’s a spot for it, if not I’ll sell it.

I like objects that come with provenance. This small St Anthony statue came with a note stuffed in the bottom, which explains that it was a gift from a nun and a good luck charm. Apparently the head was broken off in 1916, well over 100 years ago. It doesn’t look like they ever tried to repair it, and neither have I. It’s in my cupboard, head by the side. I’m not religious or particularly superstitious but I’m attracted to these types of objects regardless.

Lastly, the bin contains a lot of old photos. These ones ended up in one of my drawers, because I figured they were from Montreal.

These ones I recognized easily. They’re photos of St Joseph’s Oratory, but before they started building the dome. So, most likely the early 20s based on what I’ve read.

I wasn’t sure about the rest. Thankfully, a friend is a highly trained Montreal tour guide, and he told me that they were all from the area. This is the Point St Charles rail yard, circa the 1920s.

Apparently this is the view from Mount Royal, from around the same time. Pretty cool!

Finally, this one is in Old Montreal. The horse and buggy dominance makes it look older, but apparently they stuck around in Quebec a little longer than they did elsewhere.

Oh, and one more thing, this old Valentine from the same time period.

A lot of what’s in that box are old photos, negatives, and so on. Those are hard to process, because they take time to document nicely, and frankly people don’t seem to care about most of them so I wonder if I’m wasting my time. But then, when people do care, they can be very rewarding to share. It’d be nice if I could delegate that task to someone else. We shall see.

Too many books / The great re-organization pt.1

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Sorry for the long wait. It was a busy year, and after yard sale season ended I became laser-focused on organizing my various spaces.

I might remember 2023 as the “Year of the Book Hauls.” Not just the wackos who tossed a recycling bin (or two) of often antique books almost every week for several months, but also a few other fairly large book hauls, including one at that spot I literally pulled an all-nighter digging through (another memorable experience that I’ll have to expand upon at some point).

I’m happy I saved the books, and have already earned somewhere between a few and several thousand dollars selling the books, but my biggest regret this year was also how I dealt with them. A lot – we’re talking several hundred – ended up in the “yard sale bins,” but it turns out that books really don’t do well at yard sales. Sure, some people will buy some classics, but most just sat collecting dust, while I (and the friends I hire to help at my sales) got plenty of exercise trotting these heavy boxes in and out of my storage spaces. It was not dissimilar to how Sisyphus got a great workout pushing that rock up that hill over and over again.

Also a point of irritation: the space I wasted at yard sales displaying books that rarely sold, when I could have put literally anything else in the same place with better results. I think I would have made about as much money selling vintage underwear than I did selling these books… and the vintage underwear would have weighed a lot less. There were bins that barely made it to sales until the end of the year, because they (the forests) got forgotten for all the books (trees) in the way. The yard sale book strategy was simply not an effective use of space or time.

Anyways, by the end of yard sale season, I was sick of the books. Thankfully my mom and sister were willing to help me sort them. The picture above is the conclusion of a few hours of work, where we assembled 23 boxes of old/antique books – about 360 total – for a bulk sale.

Here’s a couple of the 23 boxes, just as an example. We weeded out newer books, and kept some classics that we thought had a better chance of selling at my sales (even that might have been a mistake, but oh well). Mercifully, someone off Facebook Marketplace came pretty quickly and bought them all for 400$.

Otherwise, about a month earlier I sold five boxes of incomplete sets for 100$ (the prodigious book tossers owned two complete sets of the “Source Records of the Great War”, and two incomplete sets… incredible).

Before that, I sold two boxes of Franklin Library (a company that publishes nice, leather-bound editions of classic works) books for somewhere around 300$.

So, the profit was there (this doesn’t even include the books I sold on eBay, including one that went for 700$). The only issue is that it took me almost a full yard sale season to realize that these “yard sale” books were boat anchors, and that the best way to deal with them was to unload them in bulk. Looking back, I shake my head thinking about how much effort I put into hauling these books around.

“Live and learn” is an apt expression here.

I should also include a quick mention of all the books I ended up curbing or donating. Above is just the purge pile from the day my mom and sister helped – there were many more I decided weren’t worth the effort on different days. If curbed, I always left them in places where I knew lots of people would walk past and pick through them. For donation, I left most in various book exchange boxes, the kind that you see often walking around this city.

There’s still about 300 books in my garage, but at least those are cool ones that need to be listed on eBay, or that I’ve decided I need to research further.

After all that, I was in a mood for a reset. I wanted to get my spaces in order, ideally in a way that would promote superior order going forward. Thankfully, the fall weather held up pretty nicely, affording me lots of time to organize my various spots in relative comfort. First came the Coloniale space, and the many bins of yard sale junk (some of which I hadn’t been good at keeping organized, because of the books). This bin, for example, was just a huge mound of papers that people rarely saw. Most of them were cool, but you can only have so much 1960s-1980s travel ephemera (for example). I left about half of it on the curb for other pickers to dig through.

By the end, everything was in its place. Coloniale is for yard sale stuff, and occasionally overflow. So the junk was purged, the random things that fell by the wayside (and sometimes got moldy) tossed, the hallway raked, and the things that were too fancy, or simply warranted further research were brought to the garage, aka “The Office.”

And I’ll leave it at that for now. Hopefully it doesn’t take me another three months to get to part two.

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!