Dump diving...

kiyote

Anyone else do this? I found a costume ring, 20 horse-shoes and other horse tack,a huge tree saw, 1940s desk telephone, a '56 CA license plate, a toy lead solider and some pretty neat bottles. My time now is torn between dump diving and metal detecting.

pocketpiececommems

Is this at a modern dump or an old abandoned one?

johnny9434

i helped out with a coupla old ones. got some decent glass bottles. nothing more thou

fiveNdime

a new reality show? - dump pickers!


i have a friend that used to drive a bulldozer at a dump. the stuff he came home with was amazing (more so that it was discarded)

i always look for treasure no matter where i am.


** if you want to get rid of the lic plate, its another item i collect for the walls in the garage.

kiyote

It's on a hillside behind my house-- there's two sections; one from the 40s to late 50s, one from the late 1800s. Things from the late 1800s are fun-- they're all: "PATENTED JULY 14th 1892" and such.

johnny9434

thats cool kiyote. and alot of fun as well

OldEastside

It's been awhile but I used to go dumpster diving in the industrial areas of
the San Fernando Valley years ago, the main theme was aluminum cans for
which it was not uncommen to recycle $40 to $60 worth of cans a night,
being jobless at the time this kept the roof over our heads and basic food
staple's on the table, and on Sundays we'd sell all the other cool trash we'd
come across at the Swapmeets, among some more memorable items retrieved
from the trash were three gold pocket watches (found at three differant times)
over a period of two years, a canadian 1958 totum silver dollar, and also we
found countless HP copier cartridges that were worth $15 to $25 each to a few
guys that would refill them and resale them to companys that had that equipment,
we found all kinds of stuff and we prided ourselfs at reducing the waste in our
local landfills.

One memorable day at the swapmeet was a day this Guy was checking out the
boxes of circut boards I would retrieve for a half dozen or so electronic guys
that loved looking for memory chips and such, memory chips were in short supply
and recycling them was not uncommen back in 1988, I had no idea at the time
about memory chips soldered to circut boards so I grabed any boards found
in the trash and had a box of these paticular boards that were later explained
to me were rejects for the targeting system for the B1 Bomber, that guy was
a CIA agent from Langley VA, anyhow I checked that can a couple days later
and found it to be enclosed completely in chain link fence even over the top as
well as two cameras mounted and signs stating all electronic items are broken up.
The regulars at the Swapmeet over the next few weeks told me that they were
approched and were asked about me for about a month before they confronted
me.

Ain't that wild, but ya never know what ya can find in the trash

Steve

morgansforever

PC I'm using now, came from the dump.
Needed a hard drive, installed XP, wamo, working PC.

pcgs69

My buddy's lawn used to be part of a dump. When he was creating his garden he sifted the dirt and found two silver dimes - one's a merc and I'm not sure what the other was. So some stuff can be found.

My dad and I used to look through a dump from one of the old grand hotels in this area. Found a lot of bottles that way.

ricko

Old dumps can yield a lot of treasures.... lots of bottles, but also small gold items - remember, gold was not of the value we see today and many people discarded 'old gold' like kids rings, watches etc. When I was a kid, there was a fellow that would go door to door in the town - and other small villages - and ask to buy 'old gold'.... he would give a token buck or two (a big deal then) and would go merrily on his way. Cheers, RickO

curly

I know a feller who used to work at a trash incinerator in Dayton Ohio. He sorted the trash as it came in on a conveyor belt. He told me he made on average half again his weekly pay sorting trash and finding money. Once, he even found a dead man that had spent the night in a dumpster and was crushed in the hauler. He thought it was a manequin at first.

The dead feller was a childhood friend of mine.

pocketpiececommems

And take all of the old broken wornout Craftsman tools back and get new replacements.

lordmarcovan

Being "down in the dumps" can be fun, sometimes!