Awesome thread people, great job at saving all this stuff from the landfill!
Just a few hours ago I spied a rather new bag-less Eureka vacuum cleaner in a dumpster as I walked by. Jumped in, snagged it, and took it home to test. Worked fine, but suction was poor. The owners apparently never knew that the filter needs to be cleaned periodically... 3 minutes later it was working good as new. As a side note, I always grab the vacuums I see. Usually they just have a broken belt which is easily and cheaply replaced, are clogged, or are even working fine but have just been upgraded. They are the most common working appliance thrown out, in my experience.
My 2 favorite and somewhat recent dumpster/curbside finds are as follows:
In december '11 I was driving around my girlfriend's neighborhood and saw a hulking mass of black metal in the darkness. I am an opportunistic scrapper so I parked to check it out. What I saw blew me away. No way was this going to be scrapped!
Had to use an epoxy weld to re-affix the door, and replace some rotted 75 year old rubber seal, but here she is...
A working, totally original (aside from the black paint) May of 1937 Frigidaire Refrigerator. I fell in love with the Art deco design immediately, and heaved that 250+ LB piece of awesome into the bed of the truck asap.
Got it home, fixed the door, and tested it. It works perfectly; the compressor humming beautifully and the small freezer compartment frosting over in good time.
Did some research and found that restored examples go for some good money, but I will be keeping this well past it's 100th birthday.
At 4 feet 6 inches, and with a capacity of about 5 cubic feet, it isn't large by modern standards, but I plan to use it as a beer fridge in my man-cave of antiques and cool stuff. Everything works. Love the thing.
Last may, I was investigating a dumpster next to a photo shop and saw piles and piles of old-school photo paper. Agfa, Kodak, etc. Figured it was good so I went and got the truck, and totally filled the cab with all the boxes not soaked with water (it had started raining, probably saved 2/3rds of the stuff).
Took them back, unloaded a few hundred pounds of the stuff, into the safety of roofed shelter, and started listing on eBay. Made over 2,500 off that find.
Have many many other good finds logged, but these are my most memorable as of late.
