A week in the life of a thrift store "auminer" - Page 2

Originally Posted by NamVet

I love this thread. It amazes me all the great stuff u get off this one place. Gives me hope i may find a place like it some day.

Start by asking them if you can have their old, maybe 10+ years old CRT TVs. They'll be grateful to get rid of them & it'll develop from there.

Originally Posted by scrapping4ever

Is that a game boy below them speakers? Don't scrap that!

It won't power on. Bummer.

Originally Posted by hobo finds

A place by me has about 15 of them priced at $4.50 each

This store has some pretty high 'velocity' requirements. Stuff's gotta move or they toss it.


Had another good haul today. Kinda weird stuff for what I usually get, but good nonetheless.

First up, playing a little catchup on not getting any TVs yet this week. One junk vac, and one Kirby that jgholino will be getting a PM about... wonder if it's even feasible to ship a vac from DFW to KC?



Next, and here's some of the wierdness I was talking about... plumbing & door hardware. Never got that kinda stuff from them before, BUT I LIKE IT! Almost all off the plumbing stuff is solid brass... almost all of the door stuff is not. Brass on the tailgate, zinc/steel in the bed. EDIT: those hair masher thingies, to the right of the brass, left of the alarm clock,,, sometimes the part that (I presume) actually contacts your hair is extruded aluminum. Tossed a bunch of those before I realized that.



A closer gander:



More door stuff (again brass on the tailgate), a radio, a printer, and an empty router box. ?




Can't complain about 10-15 pounds more brass in the bucket!!

old file cabinets work great for sorting/storing scrap

Originally Posted by jghilino

old file cabinets work great for sorting/storing scrap

I kinda liked the earlier post about putting my sawzall, skilsaw, etc,etc in there.

Hey, you interested in this Kirby? LOTS of accessories/attachments. Vac runs, beater bar spins, but unless I'm doing it wrong, the catch that locks the base & handle rigid, so you can tip up the base, is broken/missing.

More pics here: https://app.box.com/s/xxbbw3uzvnm908bsc392

Friday is wire day, apparently. LOL

The day started off rainy, then got hot & sunny, then, rain again. Who knows what the next five minutes will bring. But with a rainy start, perhaps fewer people running donations to the thrift store. That gave the guys time to test inventory, straighten up, and sort out wire that they really just don't have a market for. Also in the mix was another nonworking t-i-v-o, a couple of those ubiquitous printers we all love/hate, and a tower.



Possibly the weirdest thing that's happened to me in a while. In the box of wire was a bumper sticker with a quote I kinda like. That's not weird. What's weird is that I'd JUST posted the quote in another thread on this forum minutes before I went to the thrift store.



Texas weather, and compare yesterday's image of my back window with today's vis-a-vis the bumper sticker. Not solid proof of a coincidence, I suppose. I could've bought the bumper sticker today & just used the opportunity to quote it in a post. But that's not what happened.



Taking the missus to Ghengis Grill for Date Night tonight. Yall have a good Friday night!

And today we wrap up the week with a pretty darn good haul.

First the bulky stuff... I took this first pic at the wrong rez... sorry. Left to right it's 2 VCRs, 2 paper shredders, 2 printers, 2 breadmakers, a DVD player, 2 boomboxes & a blown speaker. Not the most lucrative stuff, but it all counts.



Here's a hot mess. 5 sealed boxes of xmas lights, a brass lamp, 2 partially brass fireplace andirons, a brass & glass chandelier, a laptop laptable thing with built in fan, clock, another papershredder. In the bed, a couple of weird steel lamps and a pile of old routers, cables, & a couple of sets of wireless homephones.



A good day to cap off a good week. Thanks for joining me on this adventure, and I hope all of yall find your own little treasure chest like this someday. They keep me busy, that's for sure! You gotta take care of them after you land them, too. The missus is always bringing them cookies & whatnot, and about every three or four months we throw a pizza party for them.

This isn't from the thrift store, but rather from an auction lot I won. Didn't want to make a new thread just for this, though. Got all these, plus about 10 printers (with $18.70 worth of cartridges at ecyclegroup if they all test good), and 3 LCD screen monitors. $210 and a 50-mile-round-trip to go get em.



Guess I know what I'm doing Sunday while I'm watching football!

Wow... busy day to cap a busy week. Got ... I guess 4... loads to take tomorrow. Got the Ford loaded with all the tin it'll hold... got the Nissan loaded with the rest of the tin, plus 100+# insulated wire, transformers and dirty aluminum. Gonna re-load the Nissan with brass, stainless, 6063 aluminum, sheet aluminum, cast aluminum, die-cast, xmas lights for one yard,,, re-load the Ford for a trip to the other yard with printers, 100+# of AC adaptors, 60-ish# bin of fingerboards, and another 50-ish# bin of mobos, a bin of keyboards as a test to see if that's more economical than breaking them down... plus one of those trips will include a swing past the Mr. Parcel to ship out a 18x18x24 box of ink cartridges (carefully packed) to ecyclegroup. Here I give a special thank you to those folks that threw away their old tarnished & scratched up twin-size brass head & footerboards into that barditch last Tuesday... Your litterbugging netted me right at 20# of clean brass. Domo arigato. I was soooooo happy when my test magnet only registered a faint tug on that dull yellow metal.

And then I get to write a check to State Farm for my wife's truck note so I can be broke again... LOL

Nice haul today. Here's a couple highlights:

Scrap laps:



NOT scrap brass andirons. Gonna polish these heavy suckers up & set them in front of MY fireplace!!

A word of advice to any of you who land a thrift store: Keep mum about what's worth what. I've noticed the past couple months that I don't get near the insulated wire that I used to, some items have even had the cords cut. Nothing like getting a cheapo walmart coffeepot with no cord. And I've noticed that all the (very few) towers that I get anymore are missing ram & hard drives. Turns out, I walk in the storage area of the store today & spot a ginormous trash can filled with wire that THEY are now saving for themselves. And then, over on a bottom shelf in the back, a couple computers that I guess I won't be getting any time soon.

Oh, well... you live you learn. As long as it's going to the store's mission, I guess I can't really conplain. I'll be talking to the manager Monday about that.

On a positive note, a friend called today who's helping a friend of hers move to an assisted living facility. The guy has been a computer tinkerer for YEARS, and a hoarder to boot. Well, the way she put it in the phone call was that ther were a "couple" of "old computers".

I only managed to fit 27 towers, 4 laptops, and an assortment of miscellaneous random boxes in this load... the missus & I are taking both the Ford AND the Nissan over there next Sunday to finish the cleanout.

LOTS of PCI cards, some of the oldest I've ever seen, in these boxes.