Dumpster Diving?

What is the best thing you ever found in the trash, or dumpster?

I have a friend that found aprox 50 copies of windows 98 SE with boot disk's in sealed packages in trash dumpster at Abott labs.
He was so kind to give me one, It was a nice upgrade from Win 95, Ah! it was long time ago.


I personally try not to make habit of diggin in the trash!

 

A bra for a late 90's corvette, college textbooks, cat5, keboard trays. Part of which went to Ebay...

 

I found a pencil....

go me.....

but it wasn't in a trash can....

it was on the floor. lol

 

i used to work for a company that did the disposal containers- not garbage, but stuff from remodels, moves and construction sites. the drivers used to bring in all sorts of stuff - the most memorable one was an OLD computer he wanted me to see if I could fix up for him. it didnt have a monitor, and i didnt want to hook it up to the work network, so i took it home. wasnt even sure if it would start....lol

it worked- cleaned it off - but the guy who threw it out had left ALL his personal files on it. hadnt even TRIED to delete them- social security numbers, bank account info, documents from his work- very confidential company info and accounting stuff (including the companys bank numbers and access codes) - LOADS of info that could be VERY damaging (for him and his employer)....I was just in disbelief...got rid of everything, cleaned off the hard drive and gave it back to the guy who brought it to me.

it just amazed me that someone would leave all of that information on a PC...

 

i have a veritable Aladdin's cave under my house! when i moved in the cellar was crammed floor to ceiling with boxes of junk. some of it 50 yrs old. most of it was disgusting rat eaten, rotting rubbish. (up wards of 40yrs of rat nesting etc). the previous owners put a whole new meaning to the words 'pack rats'. i was supposed to through out the lot but couldn't resist looking in the boxes before they went to the tip. i ended up with a pile of boxes with stuff i felt bad about throwing. i have been slowly sorting through them. there are several 'valuable' things down there. a Japanese porcelain doll. her clothes are rotten but the figurine is perfect. she is worth about $500 in her present condition, and about $1,500 if her clothes were perfect. there is an old Bakelite dial phone worth $250. and a whole load of brass chandelier type light fittings that i haven't got a price on yet. military paraphernalia, 40's, 50's, 60's, and seventies stuff. i am going to sell it all. thanx for letting me share lol. aloha

 

Great find laurieB!

True dumpster diving... I spent a summer between college years working on a garbage truck. The guys were always finding things worth keeping and tucking them up behind the cab. One special assignment; we were sent out with an empty truck to pick up a load from a warehouse that had been water damaged. Turned out to be a huge shipment of disposable diapers that had the outer cardboard cases water damaged. The diapers themselves were in sealed plastic, and were fine, but the shipping cartons were water stained and ugly, so they were trashing the lot. A couple of the guys had babies as home, so we saved everything we could carry uncrushed, then fed the rest into the hopper. Those guys were probably kept in diapers until their kids got potty trained.

 

i don't think i could be a true dumpster diver. in the case of all those boxes, it was 'curiosity' that did it. i just HAD TO look to see what was in them. i threw out two complete container loads of total crap. what i was left with will hardly pay for the time it took to go through it all...especially if i allowed for 'dirty job' allowance lol. as a side benefit, though, there were bales of material, and other such stuff that i think might end with me starting a business in interior decor. so it might make me rich anyway.

 

I live in some apartments, and while throwing out the trash yesterday, I found a computer in the dumpster. One of my kids told me, it came from the apartment down stairs. I'm still looking for info on the motherboard, but the cpu is a P4 Intel 800Hrz 3Ghz chip, but four or five of the pins are bent.

I'm sure that the power supply is ok, and the two sticks of 256 mg's of 400 DDR Ram. And a case that has five CD drive bays, and room for three hard drives.

This computer is less then a year old, from looking at the screw marks, they took out one hard drive, and all of the pci cards. The motherboard has on board sound and video.......this is one of my better finds.........wobbles

 

We have 'bulk rubbish' collections every six months. Meaning that everyone stacks their trash items that are too bulky for the trashcan on the roadside verge for collection.

You should see the 'Vultures' picking through and breaking into fights over my trash pile of old computers, A.V. equipment and parts!

 

I had a driver in the company that would deliver for me...

funny thing is evey stop he would check the dumpsters. I used to be amazed at the stuff he found

one time he came back with a monitor 21"
another time he came back with a laptop (old one but hey still a laptop)

lucky sob I wonder how much stuff he found and did not tell me about

 

After I read your Thread it Inspired me to start this one!

I'm thinking of new Thread: "TIPS FOR DUMPSTER DIVING"

 

Mazda RX7 with turbo. Mine had a moonroof.