The state of play in my neighborhood for a few years has been if you leave something on the side of your trash cans with any salvage value, independent pickers will scoop it up before the real government supported/approved collectors arrive. Even without a Craigslist/free cycle site posting alert.
Still though, there’s a surprising amount of stuff to me (mainly furniture) that is ignored and so just gets compacted and shipped to the landfill.Report
A free couch is only merely a free couch until the first dewpoint is reached. After that, it’s not only a free couch, but free lots of other stuff.Report
Yeah, figured out mid decade when simultaneously consolidating households in a marriage and unloading the bulk items from my late parents’ estate that, e.g. mattresses are worthless once transported out the store.Report
And to follow up on John McCumber’s recent excellent piece – http://ordinary-times.com/2021/02/11/american-pickers-picking-and-grinning/
American Pickers, Antique Roadshow, and all the other trash to treasure shows can really give one a mistaken impression of the monetary value of old stuff – typically, anything that was massed produced only has value if it’s in absolute pristine condition.
(I will say that pickers and especially roadshow are becoming more self aware of this fact. I don’t watch it often, but a recent episodes of roadshow had people that seemed to be more familiar with the potential value of their items, because now things may have been acquired twenty years ago, but in the internet era)Report
My uncle runs an antique store down in Tampa and, last time we visited him, he gave us a minor speech about Young People These Days and how they just don’t care about quality.
He pointed to a small end table that was marble. “That’s a marble end table!”, he said to me. “The kids today don’t care.”
I tried to make some small noises about Kool-Aid stains on an end table and how if you used a milk crate, you could put your magazines on it without thinking “this is a marble end table!”
My ancestors, for example, would have seen a marble end table as suitable for holding a porcelain figurine. An especially dainty one. Like, extending an pinky finger and holding an open umbrella or something similar.
What does it do? Nothing. It sits on the marble end table and extends its pinky BEGGING you to break it off and make it worth half as much.
And Kidz Today just want a milk crate that they can spill a bong on.Report
The state of play in my neighborhood for a few years has been if you leave something on the side of your trash cans with any salvage value, independent pickers will scoop it up before the real government supported/approved collectors arrive. Even without a Craigslist/free cycle site posting alert.
Still though, there’s a surprising amount of stuff to me (mainly furniture) that is ignored and so just gets compacted and shipped to the landfill.Report
A free couch is only merely a free couch until the first dewpoint is reached. After that, it’s not only a free couch, but free lots of other stuff.Report
Yeah, figured out mid decade when simultaneously consolidating households in a marriage and unloading the bulk items from my late parents’ estate that, e.g. mattresses are worthless once transported out the store.Report
And to follow up on John McCumber’s recent excellent piece – http://ordinary-times.com/2021/02/11/american-pickers-picking-and-grinning/
American Pickers, Antique Roadshow, and all the other trash to treasure shows can really give one a mistaken impression of the monetary value of old stuff – typically, anything that was massed produced only has value if it’s in absolute pristine condition.
(I will say that pickers and especially roadshow are becoming more self aware of this fact. I don’t watch it often, but a recent episodes of roadshow had people that seemed to be more familiar with the potential value of their items, because now things may have been acquired twenty years ago, but in the internet era)Report
My uncle runs an antique store down in Tampa and, last time we visited him, he gave us a minor speech about Young People These Days and how they just don’t care about quality.
He pointed to a small end table that was marble. “That’s a marble end table!”, he said to me. “The kids today don’t care.”
I tried to make some small noises about Kool-Aid stains on an end table and how if you used a milk crate, you could put your magazines on it without thinking “this is a marble end table!”
My ancestors, for example, would have seen a marble end table as suitable for holding a porcelain figurine. An especially dainty one. Like, extending an pinky finger and holding an open umbrella or something similar.
What does it do? Nothing. It sits on the marble end table and extends its pinky BEGGING you to break it off and make it worth half as much.
And Kidz Today just want a milk crate that they can spill a bong on.Report