August 2024 – Things I find in the garbage

Cold Turkey

August 31, 2024August 31, 2024 garbagefinds12 Comments

I’ve been spending a lot of time getting my garage organized in recent weeks. I’m not getting paid to endorse this, but the Cold Turkey blocker has helped my productivity greatly. I set it to block distracting websites from my computer for most of the day, and after a brief adjustment period I found that I don’t even miss them. It helps that I enjoy my work, and am now actually excited to go and rearrange the deck chairs of my personal Titanic (aka, my various storage spaces). Sometimes I struggle with work-life balance when I get in these productive mindsets, but “getting things done” is definitely a step in the right direction.

I tidied up this corner/disaster nicely. The storage unit was a mess. The bottom two drawers had eBay listed stuff inside, which is fine. The drawer that doesn’t close was stuffed with extra wires (for when I find something without cables), which needed to be put in a bigger drawer. The others were largely filled with miscellaneous junk, including one that was just golf balls.

One of the drawers was full of stuff from one particular spot. The non-book finds from the book tossers. So I figured I’d clear that one out by finally taking photos of what was inside.

The most valuable thing in this batch is probably that painting. It appears to be by Margaret Heath, who is notable enough to garner estimates in the hundreds of pounds for her artwork. I thought that metal mop head tin was kind of funny. Today a thing like that would be packaged in the lowest grade plastic available. Times have changed.

A small box held a bunch of vintage & antique postcards and other small paper ephemera.

Here’s a selection of my favourites. These people were definitely collectors, and probably hoarders considering they owned up to four copies of the same book. All that to say that I doubt they had a personal connection to any of these photos. I suspect a lot of this stuff came from estate sales.

Here we have a couple nice pens and some old war stuff, including a WWII-era leaflet that appears make fun of Hitler. I found a similar one online that had an auction estimate of 80-150 Euros. That seems high to me, but maybe they know better.

Edit: apparently it sold for 440 Euros. I guess I’ll have to find where I stashed it… I need to get this on eBay!

And here’s some last bits and bobs. Maybe these folks were among the 2140 who voted for the Dollar Cinema guy in the 2017 Montreal mayoral election.

A lot has changed since I took this picture. The plastic storage unit is now somewhere else, and much better organized. I put my lounge/work chair in its place. The stuff that was on top (mostly pre-packaged eBay items) is now on the big shelf in place of the books, which looks much tidier. (Re: the books, I’m still trying to sell them. I wasted time with one flake who said they’d show up today before ghosting, and now I’ve moved on to someone who seems pretty serious – fingers crossed). Most notably, where my chair (and more books) was before, I set up my photo lights again. I don’t remember why I took them down, but I haven’t had a real photo setup for over a year now. So, my next photos should look better than these ones, which I’m not all that happy with… but they are “good enough.”

I was hoping to do a yard sale this weekend, but the weather is looking pretty iffy. Saturday is a write-off, and Sunday is looking sketchy (windy and potentially rainy). It’s a long weekend though, and Monday looks nice… but my gut is telling me that holiday Mondays usually aren’t good for sales. What do you think?

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: [email protected]. Note that I really suck at keeping up with my email.
5. Help support the blog, or just buy me a coffee! PayPal link below.

Books-b-gone / yard sale

August 23, 2024August 23, 2024 garbagefinds5 Comments

This shelf is where quality junk goes to die. Or, less dramatically, to collect dust. Many of those boxes are from past producers, and contain the best or most interesting things from those places. To the left is an over-encumbered Tupperware shelving unit that is filled with largely the same stuff, topped with things that are already listed on eBay.

Organization is clearly not my strong suit.

Originally my plan was to tackle some of the boxes first. But then I saw the books again. They were always there, but at some point, after something sits somewhere for a while, you forget it’s there and it becomes almost like wallpaper.

Nearly one whole level of this unit was taken up by books. And that’s not including some books that were on a smaller shelving unit to the right of this picture. So I decided that the best bang for my buck (de-cluttering wise) would be to just sit down and focus on the books.

So over the past few days, I spent about ten hours researching these books. I knew that most probably weren’t worth all that much, so my main goal was to identify the ones that were worth the effort of listing on eBay or elsewhere. So I was looking at comparable prices, but also trying to gauge supply and demand. If I list something for 30$ and it sells in a few months, that might be worth it. If it sits around for years, then it’s probably not.

In the end, I cleared out about 3/4, if not more of the books – somewhere around 235 in total. Nine big boxes and 5 medium ones. The books you see below didn’t make the cut. There are some good titles in there, but also a lot of incomplete sets, or books whose covers are falling off, etc. The plan is to sell the whole lot in bulk. I didn’t have much trouble finding a buyer for the last (even bigger) book cull last year, so hopefully the same is true this time around. My asking price on Facebook is 300$, although I think the odds are good that I’ll end up taking a best offer.

I’ll let you know how it goes! The buildup of junk at my storages is starting to drive me a little batty, and I’m really hoping to unload a lot of stuff at yard sales these next few weeks. The university kids are back in town, and they need stuff (and often have $$ to spend).

Speaking of which, I plan on doing two sales this weekend, weather permitting. On Saturday, I’ll be at the 4096 Coloniale spot from roughly 12-6. On Sunday, I’ll likely do the same thing. If not, I’ll edit this post by tomorrow evening to reflect the new plans. Hope to see you there!

Long time no see

August 21, 2024August 21, 2024 garbagefinds20 Comments

Sorry for the long wait!

There’s no really good reason for taking so long. I think that my attention span has taken a turn for the worst (and it wasn’t very good to begin with) since the advent of TikTok and Instagram’s answer for that style of content, “reels.” These days my brain seems to be wired so that spending more than 30 seconds doing anything feels like an eternity.

I don’t think that’s a healthy or sustainable way to live, so I’m looking to trim my participation in social media and reduce my (almost entirely pointless) screen time. I’m hoping that in time, my brain will revert to a previous form. For sharing purposes, that means more blogging and less Instagram. Writing a blog requires a lot more intent than posting on Instagram, and I’d like to live more intentionally.

In 2024, that makes me a bit of a luddite. But let’s hope my plan works out, and that I blog more going forward!

As for picking, the finds have been slim of late. This time of year is sometimes a little slow, because people do their spring/early summer cleaning early on, and then go on vacation in July or August. But I’m also creating my own luck to a certain extent, maybe I’ll get into that in a future post.

One of my best recent hauls came from these dumpsters, which popped up not far from home a few weeks ago. I remember walking by the place years ago. The door was open (or I could see inside somehow, I forget) and there were stacks of junk in the hallway. And through a window I could see more piles of stuff. So my guess is that someone’s hoard was unceremoniously dumped for whatever reason.

One of my favourite finds was this vintage mirror, which beat the odds and survived getting flung into a dumpster intact. It helped that it was near the top of the bin, so not much was thrown on top of it. Regardless, it was pretty lucky! Apparently my friend in BC inherited an identical one from his grandmother. That makes me wonder which Canadian retailer sold flamingo mirrors nationwide in the 50s or 60s. I found another identical mirror online which sold for 175$, but I think I prefer to have it on my wall.

Digging in these dumpsters can be pretty physically demanding. Each one is kind of like a layer cake, but you don’t eat the layers, you just move them around so that you can see all the various things in each layer. There is probably a better analogy (mining?) but I’m sticking with that one.

Anyways, to see something in the bottom layer, you have to move everything on top somewhere else. I don’t think I got to the bottom layer in this one. If it was like the spot in my last post, I would have moved heaven and Earth to get to that last layer, but I didn’t get the impression that getting to the bottom would be worth the extra effort. We were also in the middle of a heat wave, so digging was more taxing than it normally would have been.

Still, I spent probably five or six hours digging here over a few days and got maybe three or four layers deep. A few other casual pickers jumped in as well, but none of them went past the first layer. I think my best layer was the third.

That’s where I found a bag that was filled with coins. Nothing exciting, just modern, mostly Canadian currency, often already rolled. Some were stored inside a small Tupperware shelving unit, others were just loose in the bag.

It might not look like a lot, but the total here is about 300$, making it my third biggest cash haul ever (after the haul from my last post, and the 300$ USD I found back in 2018). It’s safe to say I won’t be hurting for yard sale change any time soon!

On the other side of the dumpster I found a small Tupperware with jewelry inside.

There was a lot of costume stuff, but also a bit of silver and a couple pieces of gold (the pearl ring and the single hoop earring). Also, that bar brooch at the top left is marked as Hermes. It looks real to me, and similar ones are for sale for about 300$ online.

On top of that, I saved a bunch of yard sale quality stuff. In all, I’ll probably earn close to a grand for my efforts here. Not bad!

While the pickings are a bit slim, I’m hoping to clear out some of my backlog. I have boxes of finds, some of which have been collecting dust for up to five years, stored at my garage waiting to finally be “processed.” Maybe I can focus on that for a while, and open up that shelf space for something else. My plan for upcoming posts is to share some of this backlog, but who knows? Another massive pile of fresh trash could be just around the corner.