Weird Stuff other people have thrown out

[Lisky]

soo... today i was out for a run with my dog... and i saw these girls who had a rather nice looking 30 "LCD TV out by their garbage...after a short chat, they claimed it didn't work... soo, being the poor college student i am, i figured i'd take it home and see if i couldn't get it working...

2 minutes of setup later, and now i've got a new computer monitor...
although i have now lost the all faith in the claim that humans are intelligent, i do love my new TV...

i figured i'd start a thread of... what are some the weirdest/coolest things you've gotten for free either because someone was throwing it out, or gave it to you because it didn't work?

[Teh_Hobo]

a friend of mine gave me a second gen ipod because the battery died. Unfortunately I'm too lazy to go get a new battery, so its just kind of sitting on my desk. The same guy also gave me his old pc because he was switching to a mac and apparently decided that all windows machines are worthless. Unfortunately one of my cats decided that the computer was his, and peed on it while it was sitting out before i could do anything with it. Oh well.

[Alondro]

When my grandfather died, there were some strips of golden-looking metal in one of his dresser drawers.  They had no markings, and were of two type:  3 thin rectangular pieces about 1x2 inches and half a dozen little squares of duller material about 3/4 x 3/4.  Wel, my dad thought they were just brass bits, as my grandfather used to collect samples of everything, and was going to throw them away.  I, however, convinced him to let me have them, as I noted the weight and the ductibility of the larger pieces was far greater than brass shoudl be.

And 10 years later I found out the truth:  They were in fact pieces of 18 and 10 k gold!

The down side was I sold them too soon.  If I'd waited til now with the higher prices and my gold purification kit (as you get higher prices for 22-24 k), I'd have gotten quadruple what I did.   Meh, I'd needed a little extra money at the time and the gold bits were the only extra thing I had to sell.  Being poor sucks as it really limits your options when you're in need.   

[RobbieThe1st]

From a certain dumpster/place I know I managed to get three stuffed 18 gal. bins full of resistors, capacitors and other components(mixed, of assorted types), a dozen or so 640X480 LCD displays on Fluke meter boards, several boxes of surface-mount components, and several other objects including a working bench-top multimeter(admittedly, a bit dated).

edit:
Oh, that reminds me: Network cable - I found a 1/4 full box/roll of cat6-e riser cable(probably at least 100 feet) in the aformentioned dumpster, as well as two "network tester" big clunky metal boxes which turned out to have simply three coils of network cable in each - 50ft, 100ft, and 1000ft. Wow.


I have also found a ridiculous number of rechargable nickel-cadmium and NI-MH batteries that work fine in recycle bins - not to mention the number of *charged* alkaline batteries that I find.

This wasn't free exactly, but I managed to get a broken(will not power on) Iriver H320 off Ebay, took it apart, fixed the charge port, plugged it in and it worked great.

Other than that... I scrounge anything I can find that might, possibly, have a use. As you can imagine, I have way more stuff than anyone should, but at least I am doing my part for the reduce/reuse part of the recycling cycle.


I too have noticed a fair amount of perfectly good stuff getting thrown away simply because the person has no clue or doesn't want to waste the time to deal with it.

-RobbieThe1st

[Mel Dragonkitty]

I live near a very high end college (the sort with a budget larger than a small city) and the amount of waste was frightening, both the college itself and the ultra-rich students. At the end of the school year the students would just pile everything outside the dorms for people to take because for them it was easier to walk way and buy all new the next year. Electronics, household goods, sporting equipment, clothing just piled beside the building.

[Cogidubnus]

3 greater than 25ft. long Ethernet cables.

[Drase]

I once got a huge water gun for 5 dollars. I have a friend that buys them cheap and sells them for like 100+ on ebay.

A friend of mine got an ipod once for free. This girl we know dropped it in water and it stopped working. My friend decided he was going to mess with it... so he got a drill and started drilling a hole through the screen.  Not long afterwords we heard a snap as something broke... and for some odd reason it started to work again!  So he got a free ipod, though the screen is a bit messed up, lol

[ShadesFox]

I've swiped enough computer parts over the years that I have about 3 working computers, with all sorts of odd hardware, like the socket 939 motherboard with a dual core processor with a TNT2 graphics card...

[Madd the Sane]

Somebody donated A Power Mac G5 to Deseret Industries, a thrift store I work at.  It apparently had a memory issue, and I couldn't get it before somebody either bought it or took it from the back.

Another computer thing is someone donated a Sun Enterprise 250 server, with four 40 GB hard drives, a DVD-ROM drive, two power supplies, and a Keyboard.  I had to reformat the hard drives in order to get it to run.  For some odd reason, I couldn't get OpenSolaris to work on it, so I have Debian Linux on it.

I have also seen a car emergency kit, a good one, for sale as well.  It had an air pump, jumper cables, road flares, etc...

Also, someone threw away two perfectly working computers which my Dad found in the dumpster.  One had no hard drives, but it was the fastest computer in my room for a long time (A whopping 1 GHz!)

[Sunblink]

I haven't seen anything remarkable in the garbage since I've never been bored enough to rummage through a person's trash. God, you people are WEIRD!

[Lisky]

... i don't rifle through other people's trash... it was a 30" LCD screen just sitting there by the road... i'm willing to bet just about anyone else here would have done the same thing in my position.

if you go to a college campus at the end of the semester, people throw out all kinds of awesome things... you'd be surprised what you find if you just drive around for a few minutes... apartment buildings are like one stop shopping at a free thrift store... only the stuff from the apps. is generally really nice stuff... the list includes furniture, electronics, and random decorations...

[Tapewolf]

We had a clear-out at the office.  I ended up with a selection of vintage PDAs, mostly Casio E1xx and PA2400 devices, but also an Apple Newton (Messagepad 2000), a Husky FEX/2, an HP Jornada and a couple of other goodies.
Sadly I've only been able to get the Jornada to work properly so far.  The Newton isn't responding to the touchscreen - it might require a special stylus or it might simply be knackered.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

I admit, I've never taken anything I've found on the roadside. However, sometimes when people toss stuff out on their lawn, (usually broken furniture or the like) I amuse myself by moving it into someone elses's backyard.

[yakanaj]

When we clean out the lost & found at my hotel, usually everything is either thrown out or donated to charity, I have found a few really good books, and 8GB ipod, snd a couple other good things. They are now at my house.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Sadly I've only been able to get the Jornada to work properly so far.  The Newton isn't responding to the touchscreen - it might require a special stylus or it might simply be knackered.

The messagepad I had (before someone pinched it) worked fine with anything pointy - toothpicks, stylus, handy pen, you name it. The stylus was preferable soas not to damage the screen, though.

[Tapewolf]

The messagepad I had (before someone pinched it) worked fine with anything pointy - toothpicks, stylus, handy pen, you name it. The stylus was preferable soas not to damage the screen, though.

In that case the touchscreen has failed.  Damn.

[Pagan]

The messagepad I had (before someone pinched it) worked fine with anything pointy - toothpicks, stylus, handy pen, you name it. The stylus was preferable soas not to damage the screen, though.

Toothpick? Forgive me, but that does sound like a way to mess up a screen.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Carefully. Very, very carefully. And yes, it was purely to test and see if it was the stylus, or if I could use something else. And everything else I had handy would put ink on the screen.

[Pagan]

How 'bout a mechanical pencil then? Well, if it's stolen, can't really test that.

[Tapewolf]

How 'bout a mechanical pencil then? Well, if it's stolen, can't really test that.

The main question was whether it required an inductive stylus or not.  Apparently the answer is 'no'.

[Sofox]

At a friends house, he once gave me 48 issues of Sonic the Comic for only £3 (yes, before Euro).
To make things more awesome, the issues started at comic #1 and were completely continuous (save 1 missing comic which I'd actually browsed in a shop months before) and to top things off, the last comic in the collection was exactly the same comic I'd started collecting the comics at. For months I'd been regularly buying the comic and wondering about all the stories that happened before I started collection, wishing I could have one great big pile of all the comics I didn't have so I could catch up, and suddenly an opportunity that couldn't be more perfect lands in my lap.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

How 'bout a mechanical pencil then? Well, if it's stolen, can't really test that.

Stolen some 8 or so years ago, yes. And no, I wouldn't want to try using a mechanical pencil, on grounds of the point being about as sharp as a toothpick.

[Tapewolf]

Stolen some 8 or so years ago, yes. And no, I wouldn't want to try using a mechanical pencil, on grounds of the point being about as sharp as a toothpick.

Quite.  Fingernails usually work, though for fine detail you generally need a proper stylus with a plastic tip.  Metal is not recommended, nor are pencils or anything sharpened to a fine point as it will tend to destroy the touch-sensitive layer if you're lucky, and go into the screen itself if you're not.

[Zedd]

I found a box of comics

[thegayhare]

the only interesting things I've found that people have thrown out are realy garbage... Od little bits of plastic, a broken piece of a care air freshener or the like... It's garbage true but It can be useful a number of these discards have made it into my cyborg suit and a few other things

[rabid_fox]

Mind you, when I get my new iPod, I'm going to leave my old one lying around places unattended so that it gets stolen...and the person who steals it will suffer the disappointment of having an iPod that only plays audio out of the right-side speaker and has one track on it...

The one track will be me telling them they're naughty for stealing.

[Tapewolf]

Mind you, when I get my new iPod, I'm going to leave my old one lying around places unattended so that it gets stolen...and the person who steals it will suffer the disappointment of having an iPod that only plays audio out of the right-side speaker and has one track on it...

I hear they make good portable hard disks.  Besides, one channel down sounds like something I could fix myself.  But yeah, your casual thief is probably just going to chuck it or something.

[Arroyo Milori]

I have seen at least one perfectly good sofa thrown out to the curb in my neighborhood...Just one day, one of them will be mine~

[Pagan]

"Left over sofas, right here and right now, get yours today!"

[rabid_fox]

Mind you, when I get my new iPod, I'm going to leave my old one lying around places unattended so that it gets stolen...and the person who steals it will suffer the disappointment of having an iPod that only plays audio out of the right-side speaker and has one track on it...

I hear they make good portable hard disks.  Besides, one channel down sounds like something I could fix myself.  But yeah, your casual thief is probably just going to chuck it or something.

Sure, I'll just send it your way with a KitKat for payment then.