Despite my advice that people spend 100% of their time dealing with the items that they want to keep, the first thing they usually do is to throw things away. When I ask them why, they assure me that “It was only junk, not anything of value.” So, as undignified as it is, the first thing I have to do is to go through whatever garbage cans, garbage bags, dumpster, etc., is still there when I purchase the contents of the house. ALL of the items shown in the banner at the very top of each of the pages on this site (as well as many more) were salvaged from the garbage.
My favorite example of just how easy it is to mistake items of value as being “garbage” is a pasteboard soap box from the 1960s that my sister found in a garbage can. On the back of the box was a coupon that you could cut out and mail in with $1.50 and three soap wrappers to get a set of inflatable Beatles dolls. The set of dolls recently sold on eBay for $75.00 but the empty soap box sold on eBay for $288.00
The box was sold to a Beatles memorabilia dealer who sent me a note saying he had never seen another one, and that I didn’t want to know how much he would have been willing to pay!! Why is that item so valuable? Because people think they are “junk” and throw them away!