Hi Sharon:

We have a husband and wife team here that do basement and garage clean outs for $20 plus whatever the tipping fees for the landfill site.

They quite often come across printed treasures as well as antiques that the people are sending to the dump....these amongst other treasures and objects such as appliances, older office equipment, and scrap metal are recycled through auctions, and flea markets, and metal scrap recyclers.

With the flea markets they have a network of flea market vendors they wholesale their findings to so they don't have to spend the weekends operating a booth or a garage sale.

This is how they make their living.

We also have a disabled person (prosthetic leg) who uses his pickup truck and does strictly a metal cleanup...farmers, industrial, and commercial...he charges no fee to the custoner and derives his income from recycling the metals. He isn't hurting on the income level either.

I have a friend who has rented his premises for over 20 years and the owner has just sold it and is forcing them to move. They hired a similar service in their town (although $20 more expensive than my locale) to do the basement cleanout. These people will be getting paid to remove the junk and haul it to the dump, but they also will be hauling out an older model functional dishwasher, a matching washer and dryer, a freezer, a refrigerator, and a pool table - all of which they will be able to sell at a profit.

A source I used to use when I was living in a larger town was the highrise apartment buildings.

I discovered it quite by accident.

I was raised as a good old country boy, and have chosen small towns for living due to the warmth and friendliness, etc.

I had a franchised business and was approached by the franchisor to sell my franchise and go to work for them in a larger city where they had a franchise that was failing, was going to revert to the company, and was not tapping a major market they wanted to control.

Price was right, and having just gone through a divorce decided it wouldn't hurt to change locales for a bit.

Why this background is important is because in the city I went to the people were cold, unfriendly, and totally invoved in themselves.

Being from the small towns where everyone greets you on the street, the first day I moved into the high rise I said good morning to the person that stepped into the elevator...geez if looks could kill.

Didn't stop me though - I continued to greet people, offered to carry groceries or packages if someone was overloaded, held doors, etc. For several weeks the responding looks as much as said 'what kinf of oddball are you', but eventually they warmed up and the greetings were returned, and the offers of help were accepted. The super of the building had noticed.

One evening when returning to the building he asked me if I needed an air conditioner. I was expecting to have to buy it.... but.... he said someone had moved out and left behind a small freezer and if I wouldn't mind helping him take it to the store room he would GIVE me my choice of an air conditioner. Hmmmmmm!

When we got to the store room there sat...2 freezers, 3 sofas, 1 recliner, several lamps, an apartment size washer and dryer, 6 air conditioners, 2 televisions, a stereo, 2 book cases, 2 vacuum cleaners, a set of encyclopedias, and numerous boxes holding draperies, knick-knacks, etc..

The wheels turned and that was the beginning...I offered him $300 for the lot and I would remove them all...without a blink he put my money in his pocket and I went to work. That store room returned me $2875.

Now people turnover in these places is pretty much a constant, and most of them will leave things behind. Those things left behind have to be removed by the building super and stored to be disposed of. Most of the supers can't see beyond the fact that it is just leftovers they have to get rid of, and part of their job to either store them for a large junk collection or put them in the garbage bins as the tennants move out....and most of them don't want to have to do any more work than they have to.

What a little goldmine....the complex I was in had 4 buildings and I approached the supers in the other 3 buildings and purchased the contents of their store rooms also.

Before I was done I had made arrangesments with 33 supers to purchase their store room contents....most were done every 2 months, but I checked with each super on the 3rd, and 17th of each month (common move out days) to see what they had and if there was enough to warrant a purchase.....The reason for this was that I didn't want to buy just one or two items at a time...psychological game....if they only had a couple of things and I offered them $10 or $15 to slip in their pocket it didn't carry the same impact as offering them several hundred....and I didn't want them perhaps looking for someone else to take their treasures off their hands.

The reason for this little dissertation?

The next time you drive by that highrise apartment complex perhaps you might now look at it with a different point of view.

Cornell