5 More Items Salvaged From My City’s Curbs & Sold For $1,280

Thanks for the welcome back, @ecotrain, and those kind enough to reply and/or offer support.

It was nice to see familiar names interacting with me on my first post in a while, 9 items saved for $1,685 revenue, so it’s a no-brainer to launch another one.

For ease, I’ll primarily be posting from my phone, so formatting will be limited. I’d rather post when I’m inspired, instead of needing to camp out at my laptop at home. Since most sales are recent, I can easily grab pics and figures from the apps I sell them on, or my photo library.

Here we go again with more recent sales of salvaged items...

Medical Disability Wheelchair:

• Sold for $515 cash.
• Sold to a doctor for an elderly patient with Parkinson’s that didn’t have health insurance.
• Gave a steep discount since she literally begged me on the street when picking it up.
• Found almost completely buried in the pile shown on the curbs. I saw the neck brace portion poking out and immediately knew what it was. It was in fantastic shape.
• Kept at a friend’s elevator building two blocks away.
• 39 pounds saved.
• *Seriously glad this wasn’t crushed on a truck roughly 3 hours later and that someone’s life will be easier because of me.

Automatic Cat Litter Box:

• Sold for $300 cash to a woman with 3 cats the next day after finding it.
• This was left out for a night in the rain, but the electronics were thankfully covered.
• It was a commitment to get it back because it cut off the rest of my walk, but I had faith that I could spruce it up.
• Cleaned and extensively tested with the WiFi app.
• It was worth ~$100 more, but I wanted this out of my apartment.
• 24 pounds saved.

Professional Dog Grooming Blower:

• Sold online for $240.
• Found it outside a dog grooming business.
• One of the two motors didn’t work at first, but I figured out that it simply needed a new motor brush set for $13. Thanks YouTube.
• Motor brushes are spring loaded metal rods that go up against the spinning motor. They get worn down over time and require standard maintenance replacement. These are in other items such as KitchenAid mixers, etc..
• I repaired it in 15 minutes.
• I demonstrated some major balls to call the business back to try to sell it back to them, or at least explain how I fixed it so they don’t waste another unit for being stupid (in kinder words). No call back...
• Sent video of it running to the buyer - standard protocol.
• After payment, someone else offered a premium to urgently pick it up within the hour, but I honored my word and declined.
• This blows the extra fur and undercoat off of larger dogs to reduce their shedding.
• 33 pounds saved, including recycled packaging.

$180 Swarovski Merchandise Credit Card:

• Sold via Craigslist for $125.
• Yes, free money.
• I have many gift or store balance cards, which I use/share. For example, my Amazon purchase of new baseball gear using a digital gift card code found in a paper recycling bag will arrive tomorrow.
• This Swarovski card was found with a JCrew card with $24 on it.
• Called Swarovski customer service with the buyer on the phone to validate the balance and that it was usable by any cardholder in-store.
• Discounted as that’s the way these preloaded card sales go for random companies. It’s hard to get equal value.
• Was used buy her Mom a gift.

Set Of 3 Apartment Buzzer Phones:

• Sold online for parts/repair for $100.
• This was interesting because I sold 11 of these from the same find 3 years before for $450.
• I had 3 more left to sell after swapping buttons from other scrap units I had.
• Sold these 3 years later... to the exact same guy. After almost 5,000 sales, this is likely the first time this has happened for me randomly online.
• Not counting the revenue here, but this find was technically $550, right down my street here. I have a few pieces left that haven’t sold yet.
• 8 pounds 11 ounces saved on round two.

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Summary:

5 items for $1,280 = $256 revenue per item before any shipping and fees for non-cash deals.

This helps with the bills while I keep holding and topping off my coins.

I almost always ship with boxes and packaging I reuse from the curbs. The only time I don’t use recycled boxes is when flat rate options are much more economical.

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I’m only posting 5 examples here to spread out the finds a bit. I’m also being more detailed for each as you can see, a fair trade versus my typical 10 examples with less info.

The amount of items here in no way shape or form correlates to the amount of effort I put into finding, restoring, fixing, selling and shipping these items. My effort is intended to help the environment, others, and to support myself so I can keep doing this while patiently waiting for crypto to do its thing. It’s been almost 6 years since I worked for anyone else, or at all... These things are my rewards.

I want to keep in touch with the Hive community and inspire others to reduce their waste, repair things before tossing them, and salvage what they can, when they can, to help our planet.

That’s the big picture.

Stay tuned for more and let me know what you liked to see here.

My last post: 9 items saved for $1,685 revenue

Thank you very much,
Matt