Works even if you're not in a college town. I once pulled a $4000 set of speakers out of my building's trash room - Boston Dynamics floor speakers, Polk Audio subwoofer - and I was just in a random apartment building in the bay area. Turned out the tweeter on one of the speakers needed replacing but that was like a $40 part on eBay and ten minutes of work with a screwdriver, didn't even need a soldering iron. You can get some crazy stuff if you're in the right building. Really sucks seeing it go to waste when it isn't something you can take, I always have to fight myself to leave some things behind.
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
#32townies in university cities have been dumpstering during move-out week since time immemorial. i remember finding an entire complete set of MS Office 9x on floppies in a dumpster when i was in 5th grade :) among many other things over the years. even once found what would have been a treasure trove of 'adult' videos only 5 years prior... 8 hour vhs bootlegs with 3-4 "films" each. but that was 2007ish and VCRs were mo…
Save a VCR. Nobody makes them anymore, and the technology is not easily reproduced.
Those 2000s VCR's made near the end were pretty crappy though. We used VHS well beyond when everyone else threw theirs out - it was a cheap way to record TV. We would find one, it would last 8-10 months, and then break. I must have taken apart dozens of them, it was a fun thing to do as a kid.
Meanwhile, my dad's VHS machine from the 80's works to this day, plus there is a service manual for it.
Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#33Apple's Airpods Max headphones appear to be the official uniform of University of California students. We've been visiting and I swear they outnumber normal headphones.
You will learn to think different like everyone else.
Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
My parents did (and still do this) at a little ivy in the northeast. I got some good stuff including an introductory Grateful Dead CD (this was ~35 years ago). My dad would joke that all the graduates would throw away their tie-dye shirts and go to work on wall street (not completely a joke). Now we have an entire closet filled to the brim with used water bottles and I have to periodically clean through tons of stuff…
on one hand, i hate how wasteful the culture around move-out day is *. on the other hand, i benefited from that behavior pretty successfully. i guess it's only waste if people don't pick it up and reuse it - and i'm happy to do so. i wonder if all this is becoming any less common with the rise of fb marketplace/offerup etc. hard to measure such an organic phenomenon, i guess. * truly not meant as a slight against a p…
How much goes on FB Marketplace depends on how economical the student is. Most students will only consider this for their biggest ticket items.
Students are dealing with graduation, job placement, saying goodbye to friends, welcoming family coming in for graduation, etc. Honestly most people have better uses of their time then making a few hundred dollars on the second hand market, especially for the students most well off.
Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#35There are more rich people in the US than when some of us middle-aged people were younger, the distribution of wealth has gotten much more uneven, while the numbers of rich have gotten larger.
So, yeah, a lot more just really rich students than there used to be, rich enough to think nothing of throwing out luxury goods, finding it more convenient than doing something else with them.
Then the increase of wealthy international students on top of that -- also richer than most students 20 years ago, and add on even less convenient to try to move anything back home or do anything else with it.
Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#36I did this once. I was a RA, and there must've been at least 6 mini fridges left behind. I was staying for the summer, so I cleaned the ones that were salvageable and sold them on Craigslist. Earned some easy beer money.
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Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#37I live in a uni town and when graduation comes around(pretty soon), there are all kinds of goodies on the sidewalk and trashbins. LCD TVs, clothing, furniture, food, bikes, etc. Everybody talks about evironmentalism execept they don't actually practice it.
> Everybody talks about evironmentalism execept they don't actually practice it.
I think this is just a lack of planning and options for many students. Think about it - it's the end of the year, you've got a pile of exams to study for, and then a week or two later you've got to be out of the dorms. Many students don't have a car to haul things to Goodwill or sell them further afield, and nobody on campus wants to buy their stuff because everyone else is moving out at the same time. If they look into shipping the stuff, they find it's prohibitively expensive. So the only option available in the time they have is to trash it.
Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
on one hand, i hate how wasteful the culture around move-out day is *. on the other hand, i benefited from that behavior pretty successfully. i guess it's only waste if people don't pick it up and reuse it - and i'm happy to do so. i wonder if all this is becoming any less common with the rise of fb marketplace/offerup etc. hard to measure such an organic phenomenon, i guess. * truly not meant as a slight against a p…
How much goes on FB Marketplace depends on how economical the student is. Most students will only consider this for their biggest ticket items. Students are dealing with graduation, job placement, saying goodbye to friends, welcoming family coming in for graduation, etc. Honestly most people have better uses of their time then making a few hundred dollars on the second hand market, especially for the students most we…
oh, absolutely. but the barrier to advertising resale to a large group is a lot lower than when i was a kid (we had a local free classifieds paper, rip The Echo, but you had to mail in your listings). i'm just curious if there's any meaningful difference in the amount of "direct" secondhand sales of stuff that would have otherwise gone in the trash for dumpster divers to pick through and resell.
Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#39It's not just students. Where I live (admittedly wealthy) people throw away everything they can't be bothered to do the slightest bit of maintenance on. I have found, and made functional:
- a snow blower
- various weed eaters
- vacuum cleaners
- a generator (higher capacity than the one I already had)
- a log splitter
- pressure washers (nozzles usually clogged with dirt)
- a chainsaw
- multiple typewriters (the Selectric I kept, the others I sold)
- a boat motor
- a sump pump (bottom was clogged with sand)
We've all seen those "saved from the garbage" restoration videos on youtube and wondered just how "garbage" that stuff was. Believe it, it happens.
Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
#40In LA you just leave anything you don't want that still has value on the curb and it's gone within a few hours. It's a very efficient system.