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Amazing what you'll find in a dumpster...

MRX37

MRX37

Super Member
Stopped by a dumpster that I frequently check for treasure, and I hit a small jackpot:

An old computer (not much use, but good for donating)

A boom box with a CD player that needed new speakers, and I happened to have suitable speakers to fit it.

A bunch of RCA audio and video cables, including a pair of thick RCA cables with gold plated connectors, still in their original package!

Two sets of gold plated high end speaker terminals mounted on wall panels.

And last but not least, a good 20 or 30 WORKING batteries, AA, C and D size! There were at least 20 or 30 more batteries in that dumpster, but I couldn't reach them.

Amazing what some people will throw out...
 
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Heh... I've gotten stuff like that before a lot.
But the prize goes to a buddy of mine who lives in Silocon Valley. He once found in a dumpster heaps and heaps of Pentium motherboards (back when the Pentium was hot ****) with the RAM still on them! Litterally hundreds. He started pulling the RAM and taking it. Some point into this excercise his his boss drives by and recognizes his car (at the time I believe a very hard to miss Vista Cruiser) and stops to see if everything is OK. The boss sees him rooting through a skip and is sorta like "Rich, WTF are you doing in the dumpster?" So he holds up a double handful of RAM and smiles. The boss jumps in and starts pulling his own handfulls of RAM. They made a pretty penny off that haul IIRC.
 
MRX37 said:
Stopped by a dumpster that I frequently check for treasure, and I hit a small jackpot:

An old computer (not much use, but good for donating)

A boom box with a CD player that needed new speakers, and I happened to have suitable speakers to fit it.

A bunch of RCA audio and video cables, including a pair of thick RCA cables with gold plated connectors, still in their original package!

Two sets of gold plated high end speaker terminals mounted on wall panels.

And last but not least, a good 20 or 30 WORKING batteries, AA, C and D size! There were at least 20 or 30 more batteries in that dumpster, but I couldn't reach them.

Amazing what some people will throw out...
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Without disclosing its specific location, what type of place is this dumpster located that makes "dumpster diving" pay off so well?
 
certain places you can get gold! no grocery stores though! as a former garbage man, the week old chicken, fish, beef, potatoes, fruits, they make your a$$ pucker. It's horrible. also baby diapers!

cheers
 
70salesguy said:
Without disclosing its specific location, what type of place is this dumpster located that makes "dumpster diving" pay off so well?
Click to expand...

Thrift store... :)

That dumpster is where I found my Cerwin vega speakers, several working TV's, computers, inculding a 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 computer, and all kinds of odds and ends.

I go by that dumpster every day that I can...
 
There's a good dumpster in town here. I've gotten a titanium mountain bike, a B&O Beosystem 7000, welding equipment, mowers, outboards, you name it.
 
There is an entire subculture of dumpster divers. Also people who eat discarded but perfectly fine food - they call themselves "freegans". Before you toss your cookies, they do have techniques for avoiding rotten food and getting sick. A little beyond my scope though. I'll stick to the food-free dumpsters.
 
saltwater said:
no its not legal.....
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It depends on where you are. Some municipalities ban it by ordinance to deter the homeless. My policy is, I try to be unobtrusive as possible, leave it cleaner than when I got there, and hopefully no one is the wiser. If someone shows up from the store, I'm nice to them and usually claim to be looking for a box to ship something. :thmbsp: If they ask me to leave, which is quite rare, I do so immediately without arguing - otherwise one could be a accused of trespassing, which IS illegal.

I'm proud of my dumpster diving. Just because there are people foolish enough to bury usable resources and products in the ground, is no reason to be ashamed of saving them. My 2 cents.
 
Um... that thrift store that has the dumpsters that I raid...

...They're closing up... Lease runs out at the end of March...

Very sad for me, as that place was a good source of various treasure...
 
Our former pastor was, I guess a "freegan". The refrigerator at church was always full of hotdogs and ground beef that he pulled out of the dumpster behind Food Lion. My stomach is strong, but I could never go for that. One Sunday morning he gave me a big bag full of cookies; I didn't think much of it. Later I heard that all the Sunday school classes had been treated as well. Finally figured out that, yep, he had been diving again.

Haven't done too much myself...a few tv sets that had been left beside the dumpster, plus a clean DuKane filmstrip projector with synchonized phonograph, including a mid-60s vintage sales strip for BFGoodrich tires.
 
The local thrift was clearing out LPs this afternoon while I was browsing the vinyl section. The guy was flipping through them and just chucking LPs with green tags into a dump cart.

I guess they can only keep them on the shelf so long before they run out of space for the incoming stock. I imagine that their compactor has over 50 records tossed out from today alone. Sad.:tears:
 
Who was it here a couple weeks ago who found a National HRO-60 shortwave radio, complete w/coilset in a dumpster ? For you who don't know, that is a VERY desirable tube shortwave set that a lot of us would give our eyeteeth for...
 
I did once pull a Hallicrafters Super Defiant w/speaker off the dump at the local auction barn. There used to be a ton of good stuff out there the morning after the sale. I had forgotten about all that I used to drag home. Oh, and last summer while walking through the flea market I pulled a Pioneer CT1050 tape deck out of a trash barrel.
 
How come this thread is dormant?
I can't imagine that we don't have more people here who find interesting discarded stuff!

So: Binfluencers unite! :rflmao:

For some odd reason large items should be put on the street next to the communal bins in Amsterdam (which are interesting pieces of waste disposal tech, but that's a story for another thread.). Municipal waste services picks everything up once a week.
This is weird because in most municipalities in the Netherlands you have to bring large items to municipal waste treatment facilities yourself.

Anyway.
Considering the often relatively temporary nature of people and companies residing in single place in a metropolitan city like Amsterdam, the amount and variation of things you just see sitting on the street is incredible. I've dragged back several items to home.

The most interesting find so far, next to a pair of JBL L40's in dire need of refoaming, were these massive (7" single for size reference) valves from a gargantuan combustion engine. Must have come from a large ship or industrial power generator..

Looking forward to see your finds!

Huge Valve.jpeg
 
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