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I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

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Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#191

Post by dylan604 »

bluGill wrote: post #186
slibhb wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „gratis - zum mitnehmen“ (free to take with you) and people who want/need come and collect them. Only if anything is really unwanted, you take back and throw away. It's…

Every year my city does a clean up day - put anything on the curb and they will take it away (hazardous waste needs to go to a special collection location not the curb). All the scrappers know that day and will be driving around trying to beat the trash trucks to anything good and as a result most of the "trash" doesn't get to the dump. People do put things on the curb other times of the year, but a dedicated clean u…

My city does this monthly in what is known as bulk trash day. This isn't an uncommon thing. There are people that know these schedules and drive around to collect things before the city arrives to collect. Acting like this is a new concept seems for someone seems very strange to me--however far up the thread this strangeness started

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#192

Post by creer »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #121
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #77

Not surprising. I remember being an undergrad when my BA was ending. I was out-of-state, my nearest relative was several hours away, and I basically only had enough space to pack up from my room whatever could fit in my car. I don't think I threw out much , but there were definitely some things that were resigned to the bin because I simply didn't have anywhere else to put them. For example, I'm pretty sure I threw o…

> It was also a surprising PITA to get someone to take my gently-used mattress. Is it really that surprising? Places don't take a used mattress for the same reason they don't take used underwear - you may say it's "lightly used", but once it's out of the box, that guarantee is gone, and a used mattress is something that hardly anyone would be willing to buy. That is especially true since you can now buy a brand new m…

Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing.

> You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there.

Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously?

> Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10]

Well duh? Price lower? Obviously?

Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-not-only. What's happening? They seem desperate for the occasional buy by someone who doesn't know any better? Not cool. And a completely self-inflicted defeat. I see local stores receive floods of donations, have significant foot traffic - and priced to make soooo few sales.

Do they really make more money by shipping most donations to other countries - that they can ignore the reality of online, mass market, fast fashion pricing? How come these other countries can pay more money still - to compensate for the shipping cost? What's going on? Are these stores a front for something else? Some other way to pay the lease and employees?

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#193

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

dylan604 wrote: post #188
amalcon wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? It's very possible for the cost of transport to exceed the value of the goods, especially if one is flying to one's next destination. > Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This I can't help with. As far as I have seen, this is a common practice eve…

Who's your target audience for those items left on the curb? Everyone just left town.

me! not everyone who lives in a college town goes to the college.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#194

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

dylan604 wrote: post #189
bluGill wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Undergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year. Does it? I don't know anything about Duke, but a lot of colleges I know of tell your tuition is around that price. However dig deeper and you discover it is almost impossible to not get scholarships thus making the real price cheaper. I know of one school near me that automatically gives everyone a 40% scholarship, then they look at your background to figure…

Then why not just lower the tuition by 40%?

i wonder if universities can write off the "loss" of granting scholarships for inflated tuition rates? that said, scholarships come from all over, so if you're getting scholarships from outside the school itself, the school is getting all that money.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#195

Post by jdminhbg »

baxtr wrote: post #182
amalcon wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? It's very possible for the cost of transport to exceed the value of the goods, especially if one is flying to one's next destination. > Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This I can't help with. As far as I have seen, this is a common practice eve…

How is this something the police are concerned with? I mean municipal authorities, maybe, but police? Wouldn’t be the case in most of Europe at least.

Somewhere there is a line between setting an unopened box of high-end sneakers on the street and putting a rusty mattress frame on the street, and dumping like the latter situation is illegal.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#196

Post by joezydeco »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #171
monocasa wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? At my wife's alma mater, the way move out in the dorms worked was that you had 24hrs after your last final and then had to be gone. That didn't really leave a lot of time for a lot of people that had maybe two checked bags and a carry on to work with, and had spent the previous time focused on study…

I realize that students don't think this way, but they could do a few things before the end of the semester. They usually find the time to get drunk or go to Starbucks for a hit of caffeine.

They're also studying for finals and working on end-of-semester projects. And yeah, they're still kids and time management is a thing you learn at this age. But the last 3 weeks of a semester go by incredibly fast.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#197

Post by bluGill »

anigbrowl wrote: post #140
the__alchemist wrote: post #124

I wonder what we need to do to make buying and selling used items convenient. My experience has been that the bid/ask spread is too large, and liquidity too low to be practical. And if you're giving something away, no one will take it. No explanation; just observations. I want to not throw things out and buy new, but haven't found a workflow that works. (I'm in an apt building near the one listed in the article; more…

We don't have to do anything, Craigslist already exists and works great. I've bought stuff from departmerting college students, the transaction is as simple as showing up and saying 'hi, are you X? Great, here's $50, thanks for The Thing'. Some people just cannot be bothered, and if they're wealthy they simply may not care about concepts like wasting money - doubly so if they grew up with money and have never had to…

My wife often sells things we are done with. If half the people who arrange a meeting to buy something show up she is doing well. Many times she has listed something for $10, has someone say "I really want this, will you take $20" - then not show up to meet. (we are always first come first serve, but if the first person offers $20...)

My wife doesn't have a regular job so she has some time to deal with this - but her time is still valuable (there are plenty of other things do to - I don't see how dual income families can raise kids!)

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#198

Post by DFHippie »

dkga wrote: post #150

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…

This is commonplace where I live in Vermont, to the point where sometimes things are taken which you didn't mean to give away. You put "free" on it -- or don't, see above -- put it by the curb, and it's gone within the hour.

There are also plentiful thrift stores which take donations. The profound selfishness of throwing this stuff out rather than passing it on so eventually some person with less can have a better life -- the thrift stores generally are non-profits supporting the homeless, hospices, and so forth -- boggles my mind.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#200

Post by neltnerb »

baxtr wrote: post #182
amalcon wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? It's very possible for the cost of transport to exceed the value of the goods, especially if one is flying to one's next destination. > Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This I can't help with. As far as I have seen, this is a common practice eve…

How is this something the police are concerned with? I mean municipal authorities, maybe, but police? Wouldn’t be the case in most of Europe at least.

If you mean, why police would ever be involved, the answer is that there are a lot of police and not a lot of municipal workers walking around. The only way municipal workers would do anything here is if a resident of the area contacts them with 311 to inform them. And even then it can take months (if ever) if it's something like a blocked sidewalk or broken bollards rather than something important like a pothole.

If you mean why would "authorities" care, there's a lot of people that put what amounts to trash on the sidewalk and then move to a new apartment without cleaning it up, or else just ignore that they left it in front of their house until "someone else" takes care of it.

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