One Man's Trash...
I used to dumpster dive when I was a teen. Yeah, I admit it. Some friends and I collected music promos—the stuff that record companies sent to record stores to make displays. The only ways to get them were to work at the store, know someone who worked at the store, or pull the items from the trash. Well, that’s not quite true. In 8th grade we had a school dance and the cool, young history teacher we all loved somehow got record store displays for decorations that he raffled off at the end of the night. I didn’t get The Pretenders poster that I really wanted but I did get a Led Zeppelin In Through The Out Door poster (since my parents were oblivious to the double entendre meaning of that title, I was allowed to put poster on my bedroom wall). Anyhow, I asked Graham (he insisted we use his first name) how he got all of that stuff, and he explained that he contacted record labels and said he was a teacher having a dance and asked would they send some promos to decorate, which they did. Of course, within days my greedy little bastard friends and I contacted record company publicity departments asking for materials to decorate our parties. Much to our shock and delight, within weeks, boxes started arriving. Chrysalis and A & M Records were the best. It was almost embarrassing to receive giant packages filled with posters, flats, and even the occasional display standee. Pure profit when we sold them. Work at Mickey D’s for minimum wage when I could hawk free stuff and earn an entire month’s pay in a day? How about “no.”
But I digress…
One of the things we did was to hit the dumpsters behind the record stores: Licorice Pizza, Big Ben’s, The Warehouse. Not the independents; they never tossed promos. Moby Disc may have had bootleg records and the coolest vibe, but their workers were fellow collectors, and nothing went out the back door. The big chains were a different story. We used to pull some great stuff out of the trash. I wish I still had a light-up ELO store display I got once; no idea what happened to that one.
I recently dumpster-dived again, but for different reasons. I will explain.
I was walking the dog on a Wednesday morning. Thursday is trash day. I am not above admitting that I often look at open cans to see if there is a box of T cards sitting on the top. Well, I did not find T cards, but it looked like someone had finally decided to clear out a dead relative’s possessions. What I saw sticking out of the top of the recycle can was a David Hockney retrospective catalog. One of the big, heavy, beautiful art books that museums issue and that cost about fifty bucks. I took a closer look, and they were throwing away a whole bunch of art books: Faberge, Van Gough, Impressionists, etc. In the trash for recycling.
I was raised in a household filled with books. Us kids were taught that books were special, something to cherish, not to throw out. No way was I leaving a pile of books like that to be recycled like used pizza boxes or torn paper bags. I dropped the dog at home, grabbed some gloves and went back. Yup, I pawed through the trash cans as best as I could and pulled out a pile of books, which I donated to the local kiosk library (pleased to say that within 24 hours, all the books had been taken). I also found a few small items that were clearly not trash and donated them to a local charity thrift store, and a set of 1950s cards from Israel of holy land sights. Kept those. I also kept two small figurines for further research. They looked old and artsy-fartsy, so maybe valuable.
The next week, I checked their recycling cans again. Bingo! I saw more books and went home to get my car. I started unloading and realized that they had put six large boxes of books into the recycling bin. The whole bin was filled with books. I pulled all of it to take to the library on my way home from work.
Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to look through the boxes at the office; maybe my box of T cards is in there? I stood in my parking spot with the hatch-back open, pulled out the boxes, and started going through them on the garage floor. The first two yielded more art books and rat poops; I sure was glad I decided to go through the books outside. Next box had a bunch of useless periodicals (who saves old Los Angeles apartment rental guides?) so those went into the recycling bin in their rat-poopy box. Next two boxes had some older books, but nothing interesting. At the very bottom of the last box, I found a hardcover with dust jacket first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Willie Wonka’s source book.
Widely collected and valuable. The figurines from the prior trash pick turned out to be from the 1930s and highly collectible as well. I ended up with hundreds of dollars of stuff for my eBay store (that readily sold) in addition to saving books from the trash heap and passing them on to people who will enjoy them.
Karma, am I right?