Dumpster Dive Results

[TomG]

I've done a lot of dumpster diving over the years, but one trip really paid off. A company I used to work for closed down a facility and rather than sell the contents, they just hired a moving company to clean it out and throw everything in dumpsters (talk about government waste). We watched what was being hauled out, came back after hours with trucks and hauled stuff out by the ton for re-sale. It was mostly electronic test equipment and supplies, but there was also some chemistry lab stuff in there as well. One of the things I picked up was an interesting tube of fine brass colored wire that was in with the chem lab stuff thinking that I would try to figure out what it was later on. Ten years later I came across it, did some research on the manufacturer and found that they made dental alloys and some of them were gold alloys. I took it over the the local coin dealer and had it assayed and it came back over 90% gold, or just under an ounce (Au was penciled on the side of the tube, duh!).

All of the commercial Lyon shelving in my garage and shop came from dumpster diving as well as a nice ten inch reflector telescope, both from the same company that tossed out the gold wire. I really miss that place.

Tom