vintage – Things I find in the garbage

The summer lull

July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 garbagefinds6 Comments

The trash was flowing pretty consistently for a while, with lots of interesting and valuable finds, though not much in the way of gold and silver. The past few weeks have been relatively slow, with old spots drying up and no one stepping up to replace them. I’ve noticed a reduced flow around this time of year before; I figure it’s because it’s the time of year when people are most likely to go on vacation.

Fortunately, I could probably find nothing for a year and still have enough to get by. I spent a full workweek just in my garage not long ago, just organizing and researching, and after all that work it barely looked like I had done anything at all. I keep picking though obviously, because it’s fun and because it’s good to go out in hopes of finding that major score.

This spot in NDG was a regular stop for a little while. My best haul came this day, when the tossers unloaded a large collection of vintage sports memorabilia.

I saved a big haul of 1950s/1960s Sports Illustrated magazines. These are now listed on Facebook Marketplace, which I’m using a bit more these days. The “is this still available” people are annoying, but my strategy is not to chase them. Usually they’re not serious buyers anyways, so I wait for people who express a real interest in the item, and then I’ll make more of an effort.

FB Marketplace is now the best way to locally sell stuff like furniture, and also other items with mainstream demand. eBay is still my go-to for more niche items, especially when they’re easy to ship.

I found a few of the early Montreal Expos yearbooks, including the one from their first season in 1969. I sold one on eBay previously, I think for 40$. My plan this time is to sell the three as a lot. There doesn’t seem to be huge interest in Montreal Manic stuff, but I’m sure someone at a yard sale will like it.

These two Canadiens magazines have signatures on them. The signature on the left looks kind of like Jean Beliveau’s, though not one he put a lot of effort into. If true it would bump of the value of the magazine a bit that’s for sure. The one on the right looks to be signed as well, though all those scratches look like gibberish to me. There’s more on the back, which I forgot to get a photo of. If you have any ideas, let us know in the comments! Click on the picture to zoom in for a better look.

These old schedules can be worth money sometimes. It seems like anything made in the 80s or later is yard sale material, but before that they can have some real value, especially stuff from the 60s or earlier. None of these ones are particularly valuable, though the 1970s Expos and NHL schedules are worth around 10-20$ each.

Tickets can be worth good money as well. Older ones, and ones from notable games command a premium. It can be worth the effort to Google the date of the game to see if anything special happened. One of my Canadiens tickets (not pictured), for example, turned out to be from a game that was Guy LaFleur’s last at the Forum (as a Nordique). So that one is listed for 100$ on eBay, and has garnered some interest though I’ll likely have to come down on the price a bit. These other tickets don’t seem to be too special, I may group them by team and sell them via auction on eBay at some point once it starts getting colder.

That’s all for now, but here’s hoping I don’t take so long to get to the new post… for real this time!

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!

The Lens

February 20, 2023 garbagefinds18 Comments

I finally started using this Google Lens thing after hearing about it from my followers. For instance, I occasionally ask for help identifying an object on Instagram, and people would then send me Google Lens results in their replies. Eventually I clued in that it was a useful tool (it takes me a while to figure these things out sometimes). So today I’ll share three objects that this new tool helped identify.

I picked up this ceramic vase in Park Ex amongst boxes full of kitchenwares in the fall of 2022. I could tell that it was pretty old, but I struggle to describe these things (“old vase with blue and black pattern??”). Researching it would have been very difficult in the past.

(The vase had a sticker with someone’s name on the bottom, which makes me think it was inherited at some point, and “master stone” written using some kind of marker on the inside).

Thanks to the Lens, I was able to identify some relevant keywords (Qajar dynasty [Iran], Persian) and was linked to very similar pieces, like the vase at the bottom left. That one purports to be from the 18th century, though I wouldn’t be surprised if this design was made later than that as well. Either way, this seems like a pretty close match. I hesitate to pretend I’m an expert because I used the Google, but based on what I’ve seen I’m thinking this vase is worth somewhere between the few hundreds and the several hundreds.

Lots of these hard-to-research things end up sitting on shelves in my storage for years before I figure out what to do with them. I picked these up in Outremont, along with someone’s old coin collection and other quality junk, in maybe 2017 or 2018. I think I posted them here, but I can’t find the pics now. Needless to say, they’ve been kicking around a while.

They looked old, but I never did find any similar pieces in my brief research (in retrospect these ones are easier to describe than the other, given their unusual shape). I’m sure I would have figured it out if I have spent longer trying, but “there’s always more garbage” and I got distracted with newer finds.

As it turns out, Qajar dynasty/Iran/Persia are important keyword here yet again. Also, “tri-sided” and “fritware” (I’ve never heard of that kind of -ware before). The guys at top left are trying to sell theirs for 480 AUD, though from what I’m seeing you can find them a fair bit cheaper. If those guys are right about their description, these vases date to around 1900.

Finally, I always thought this platter I found in late 2018 was unusual, particularly the look of the glaze on the bottom. It’s been sitting around the house for a while, because I never had any luck finding a comparable piece online. Queue the Lens.

Thanks to this, I now have “French” “Faience” and “Rouen” keywords to work with. According to various sources, this platter was probably made in the early 18th century (though you always have to take these product descriptions with a grain of salt, because all it takes is one person describing it as such for it to become a “fact” on the internet). Anyways, the guys selling the one at bottom left are asking for 744$, but I’ve seen others in the 300$ range which I think is probably the more realistic price – maybe less if you wanted to sell it quickly.

So, I would definitely recommend you check out this Google Lens thing if you haven’t already. I think you can only use it on your cell phone, but maybe there’s a similar tool you could use on the computer. It also does translations!

Part of me dreads the day when this technology becomes too advanced and ruins the magic & mystery of finding something unusual. That being said, I don’t think we have to worry about that yet. Google Lens still comes up empty on a lot of things I research, so there’s still plenty of mystery out there… for now.

Links

1. My eBay listings, Sign up for eBay (Canada, US), Search for something you want / research something you have (Canada, US) – FYI these are Ebay Partner Network links, so I make a few bucks if you sign up for an account or buy something after getting to eBay using these links
2. Facebook page
3. Follow @garbagefinds and @garbagefindssells (selling account, operated by someone else) on Instagram
4. Email: thingsifindinthegarbage@gmail.com – note that I can’t fulfill most requests for items, many are already gone by the time they are posted here.

The book tossers pt.1

February 11, 2023February 11, 2023 garbagefinds24 Comments

If not for this spot I’d barely have any finds in 2023. Thankfully (for me at least), these guys just keep curbing recycling bins full of books on a near weekly basis. This has been a near constant phenomenon for about six months now, though it happened occasionally even before that – I first stopped here for a big pile of trash way back in 2021.

It’s funny, because from the street there’s no indication whatsoever that this blue bin would be filled with anything but the usual tin cans and whatnot. I myself wouldn’t ever have stopped for it, if not for the fact that I found cool stuff here previously.

Sometimes, trash picking can feel kind of magical.

This is a decent sized recycling bin so the books are piling up in my garage. These are just the ones I want to research more, or feel the need to sequester for now. Others go straight to the yard sale bin, or occasionally back to the curb.

A lot of the books in this picture are from sets, so I have to figure out if I have a complete set, keeping in mind that another load of books comes nearly ever week and thus a currently incomplete set might become complete with time. I just recently completed a thirty book set of Encyclopedia Britannicas from the early 1900s for instance – I found the first 27 months ago, and then another two and the final book more recently.

That might actually be a nice score. I know the market got flooded with encyclopedias and a lot of them are pretty much worthless, but the old Britannica sets do quite well.

Anyways, I figured that today I’d show you a few of my favourite individual books from this haul, all of which I found relatively recently.

I’ve found several old books about Montreal, which are always fun and easy to sell due to local interest. This one was written by a guy named N. M. Hinshelwood and was published in 1903. It seems to be hard to find original copies – most of the ones I see in my research are reprints or those “print on demand” books that are becoming more common. The only original from that list of 36 I linked to above is priced at about 50 USD, and there’s one other on eBay for about 75$, though there’s no sold prices that indicate whether or not those are realistic prices. You can see some pages that relate to our current season below.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. I figured this “Complete Book of Fortune” was a good find right away, and indeed it seems to sell for 100-200$. It was published around 1935 (no date, but includes a “birthday calendar” for 1936) by Associated Newspapers Ltd. At 640 pages, it is certainly very complete and discusses topics ranging from palmistry to the “science” of phrenology. There’s a few extra pics below, and some more in that link.

Published in 1999, this is one of the newer books from this collection. The cover was unassuming, but it looked nicely made so I did some research and discovered it was a gem. It’s one (signed) copy of 175 from the regular edition of Inishbream by Theresa Kishkan. The key factor is probably that it was published by Barbarian Press, a “fine press publisher” based in Mission, BC, and features fancy paper (my simplified version of what’s described on the second picture, lol) and woodblock prints. It sold pretty quickly on eBay for 700$. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for books by this publisher going forward.

Finally, you all seemed to like my late 1700s almanacs, so I assume you’ll like this liturgical book from 1675.

It’s written in Latin (I think), so you can kind of make out some words. The content seems to relate to the Roman Ritual, but I don’t know much about that. I’m hoping you guys can help me out with this one. I don’t know much about value yet, besides finding that other liturgical works from this time have sold for between a few hundred and several hundred dollars.

This is one of the oldest books I’ve found. Just a bit older was this one from 1610, though it was in worse condition. This one is in pretty good shape considering it’s nearly 350 years old!

These book tossers are truly absurd. I hope for my sake (both from an entertainment, as well as financial perspective) that they continue tossing out great, easily flipped, and often antique books for a while yet. Either way, I definitely have more blog-worthy stuff from this spot to share here in the future.