Free Recycled Items Found & Sold, Donated, or Kept ($0 Cost -> $432.33 Profit After Fees) - Help The Environment, Others & Yourself!
Here are some more free items found hunting the curbs in my city that I sold, donated or kept. Some are shown as examples of things I wanted to save so they weren't wasted by being crushed on a truck.
This perfect condition iPad was found on the curb in an open bag. Working, no password, with the adapter. I kept it for now.
A weird trunk found out on the curb in the rain? Let's take a look inside...
Bingo!
It's exciting to find an entire chest of electronics. This super rare vintage CD player was the best find out of the trunk. It worked and sold for $234.99, for a profit of $203.15 after fees.
Professional doctor's equipment neatly sticking out of a paper bag? Yep! Sold for $159.49, for a profit of $131.08 after fees.
This one wasn't hard to spot. It was a unique Ping long putter that sold for $99.95, for a profit of $78.10 after fees.
This find pissed me off. It was a bag full of modems and remote controls, most of which were new. I sold one or two small things for about $20 profit, but donated the rest to a thrift store. Shame on whoever tossed this out. Shame!!!
Tip: You can still salvage items that aren't super profitable to resell and simply donate them to a good cause (and get a tax write-off).
How about 11 brand new desk lamp weighted bases? I took these simply to avoid the waste. They'll sell slowly, but that's ok. at 5.6 pounds each, that's a substantial 61.6 pounds saved! The phone charging on the floor was also found for free, working fine, and sold.
This bag of bubble wrap was salvaged and used within a few days for shipping my packages. Free supplies... win-win.
Recent Posts:
About Me:
I quit my corporate job to find and sell anything I can. Two and a half years later, 2,568 items sold, debt free, a stockpile of cryptos, and free to live as I choose. You can too with some confidence and faith! I've developed many sources of inventory, many of which are completely FREE, if not at very low cost. I'm most proud of the recycling of consumer goods and tons of packaging to ship everything. This NEVER feels like work. I hope to inspire others to make some extra money and help the environment, one item at a time.
I truly want to promote recycling, repurposing, and being able to fully support yourself without a traditional job. I hope this information can be useful and motivational.
Please feel free to follow and resteem.
~steemmatt
I do enjoy reading these posts Matt. It encourages me to do more of this.
I live in a rural area so can't scour the streets so easily. Although I did have one major find of a complete china tea set not so long ago in a Welsh seaside town I was passing through.
My main "sources of acquisition" are Freecycle and the local rubbish dump. I've found it is best to visit the rubbish dump on a Monday morning after a dry weekend. Everyone is out in the open so if it rains so much gets ruined.
What sort of size city do you live in? You seem to get some amazing finds.
Thanks for your comments. I live in a massive city, so that's where the recycling volume comes from. Almost everything is just sitting on the curbs on their own or in clear bags to easily spot. Everyone seems to just walk right by it, but I can't let that happen. These first posts of mine are literally the tip of the iceberg of what I find almost every day I go out. Being able to do this for a living (with thrifting and other incomes) is heavily a function of the volume around me. If I were in Wales by you, I'd probably only be able to do this as a hobby. Regardless, it's great that you're doing what you can with the resources around you.
A complete china tea set is definitely nothing I've ever been able to find via recycling. I've found plenty at thrift stores, which reminds me of one find I'll use in a future post. Nice job and thanks for following my stories. Glad someone is reading!!
Do you have Freecycle.org in your city? I think it is worldwide. That really is a good source for me. I am on the border of two Freecycle areas so I can get double the finds. Very useful.
Freecycle is super competitive by me so I don't use it much. You probably have better success with it than I can. I've gotten one very nice item from there (a complete professional architectural printer) and a vacuum, but stopped because I think the spirit of that group is to exchange goods to keep. I could be wrong though. We also have trashnothing.org, which you may want to see if they have by you.
Though this entire post was amazing, I especially like the "about me" part.
Thanks very much for your kind compliment. I'm glad you found my post and enjoyed it. I have plenty more to share, so feel free to check back in.
Oh man, what finds! I love reading about stuff like this. Normally I have to go to my goodwill pay by the pound to find stuff.
Thanks! Just the tip of the iceberg from a few years of doing this. If there was such thing as a Goodwill whale, that'd be me. Take a quick look at some of my prior posts if you have some browsing time in the future so see some other wins that you may be able to use for idea for your hunts. We have one pay per pound near me, but it's a mad house. I recently found a sealed Adobe product for $0.43 (weighs nothing) and sold it for $175, but it was a quick find & run with the mobs at those types of stores. You must have thick skin.
Oh I know, I saw that post - you made out twice! Once with the Adobe software, and once again with the post, hehe.
I think every pay per pound is just nuts!
I'm not physically intimidated by much, but I will say that a swarm/herd (not sure which I've settled on yet) of 30 ladies yelling at me to get in the back of the line did raise the hair on my arms. Fortunately, their intimidation tactics only worked for 5 minutes before I realized they were waiting for the next restocking -- and that I was "allowed" to peruse the bins until they cleared the floor for the next wave.
Oh, and once the sheet comes off the bins - Boom, feeding time at the zoo. Crazy.
Wow, I'd never think somebody would pay that much for that CD player. Lol
That's why I always look up the model numbers. The power of audiophile collectors buying up super rare working audio equipment is one of the wonders of the world for me.
img credz: pixabay.com
Nice, you got a 41.0% @trafalgar upgoat, thanks to @steemmatt
Want a boost? Minnowbooster's got your back!
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @steemmatt to be original material and upvoted(2%) it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!