[Patrickhat2001]

Last Febuary my downstairs neighbor was moving out of his apartment. Besides some other junky furnature I noticed he had left a fairly new looking Viewsonic CRT monitor near the dumpster. Thinking the it probably didn't work I just let it sit there. Two days later the monitor was still sitting there so out of curiosity my roommate and I decide we should pick it up and see if it worked. After giving it a few hours to warm up the monitor turned on and produced a great image--up there with the best CRT monitors I've seen and much better than the monitor I had previously been using. So I ended up getting a free monitor upgrade that day, not bad in my book.

Also, while technically not dumpster diving about a year-and-a-half ago my (same) roommate found an original Atari Pong machine at a local Thrift shop. He bought it for $3 and about two weeks later sold it on Ebay for nearly $400! Quite a awesome turnaround indeed--although, personally, I think I would have held onto it.

Have any similar stories? It's amazing what people throw out sometimes.

 

[mjg]

man in rich neighborhoods they throw out like 25" crt tvs and stuff that works perfect, scary, yet true. That's how we had a tv when i was dorming, a pretty nice one at that. Lately all i see is junk, my friends neighbor had an apple 2 sitting in front of his house, i looked at it, the nerdy side of me kinda wanted to take it home to keep for posterity, but emm, seriously What am i going to do with it.
An atari 2600 would be a treasure to find tho ; )

 

[Kirosia]

I'm too scared to check dumpsters. After watching a thousand episodes of law and order, the possible contents are too damn freaky.

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kirosia I'm too scared to check dumpsters. After watching a thousand episodes of law and order, the possible contents are too damn freaky.

Word.

 

[bhd812]

when I was 13 or so A buddy of mine and I went thru this big dupster after someone moved out of a house.

we found a bunch of camera lens and old cameras, we took a train downtown and walked home with $3,000 cash each!

I still have some of the stuff sitting around here...I think I have a 8mm camera that I was told is worth $900 bucks.

also a couple of years back my buddy found like 5,000 little crappy movie pins in the thrash. he sold them on ebay mostly for $1 each but some went to $5 each to.
think about the money he made!

 

[bangraman]

A $12m out of court settlement for one of my clients. We got a decent single-digit percentage of that, although this wasn't just for the dumpster diving

 

[pennylane]

Last saturday I found a couple posters near a dumpster behind petco after i saw some asian guy standing there with a cell phone 2 hours before. I decided to investigate the asian guy (potential drug dealer) but he was gone. So I scavenged the area and found a couple fish posters.

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pennylane Last saturday I found a couple posters near a dumpster behind petco after i saw some asian guy standing there with a cell phone 2 hours before. I decided to investigate the asian guy (potential drug dealer) but he was gone. So I scavenged the area and found a couple fish posters.

So instead of drugs you scored fish posters? Ah well. That's close to my best dumpster dive- I walked by the Sanrio store on Times Square and apparently the guy who actually draws for Hello Kitty dropped by to sketch up a few things - and one landed in the dumpster - it was a nice one too, probably used by the store itself to stick behind the guy, since it was on a thick styrofoam board and painted with acrylics - it was of the duck thing in an inner tube swimming in the ocean. It's still in my sister's room.

 

[The Actual]

Once I found one of those orange reflecors that are on roads. It's pretty cool, I guess.


[size=xx-small]OK. It is not actually that cool, but I have it sitting on my desk and sometimes look at it while I do my homework. [/size]

 

[braillediver]

A nice working monitor I sold for $50.

A real nice metal aquarium stand- now it’s a turntable stand.

A new inexpensive Acoustic Guitar only worth about $150, gave it to a friends son for his Birthday.

1959 Ford Tractor manual- sold it on Ebay for $15

6 nice glass picture frames

3 nice wooden CD racks

At work I’ve dumpster dove for a ton of electronics parts. Anyone need 30 Switch Craft 1/8th inch stereo audio jacks? Way too much to list here. 5000 10uf 16-volt electrolytic caps. 3-watt metal film resistors out the wazzoo. Nice 400-volt electrolytic caps. 20 bnc to type N panel adapters worth $25 each……...


Next to Scuba diving for treasure in Lake Washington dumpster diving is a great sport. I’ve found over 12 ounces of 14 carat gold jewelry in Lake Washington so far.


Mitch

 

[Stephonovich]

Found a couple boxes of expired but never opened Canon printer cartridges near USD. Threw 'em up on eBay, no bids. However, a week or so later, someone contacted me and said he had missed the auction but found the page, as eBay keeps 'em up there for awhile. Gave me $20 for the lot.

 

[pne]

just today i found a new roll of christmas wrapping paper at the school trash. Imagine! needless to say several of my friends received belated 'empty' christmas presents during the day.

 

[redshifter]

in been a few years, but i found an ultimate keyboard stand (the expensive column kind) with two racks in my building's dumpster once.

 

[dSquared]

Not my mine, but a fun find, anyway.

When moving out of the dorms at the end of last (school) year, my good bud found a medieval-y sword (with the scabbard) in the dumpster. Didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, either.

How's that for a random find?

 

[m0nKeY bUsiNeSs]

My housemate just found a 3.5' by 9' white board sitting next to the dumpter at the engineering building. I say next to the dumpster as it was to big to actually fit in the dumpster.