Interesting Post on Ebay

[Captain Video]

Some years ago, there was a case like that here, reported in somewhat of a sensacionalistic manner in one of the Police-News show of bigger audience. It was in a middle class neighborod in the city of São Paulo ( the largest South American city ); the people of that neighborod were extremely bothered by the awful smell that was coming from an old lady's house. The crazy thing was, she was a WEALTHY old lady, she had many buildings scattered through the city, her income came from renting those buildings. She also had a 40 - some year old son that lived with her.

I guess both son and mother were somewhat mentally disturbed. Because the old lady's house was so completely full of junk and garbage, it was really unbelieavable. I am not talking about the outside of the house; no, I am talking about all the INSIDES, of the old 1940's home - a 2 level home, I must add. Every part of the house, the living room, the bedrooms, everything, was like a sea of garbage and junk. I am not exaggerating. It really was like a sea: all that garbage was at the level of an adult person's midsection, in every part of the house. They literally had to SWIM through the garbage to be able to walk inside that house. It was not like she just kept useless stuff, like 10 year old newspapers; it was even worse than that: the sacks of organic garbage, that normal people put outside the house to be retrieved by the garbage truck, she kept, all of them, alongside her piles of junk. On top of that, she also had MANY cats. And she had been living like that for YEARS.

The house was just so cluttered of junk and garbage, that she didn't sleep in her bed for years - her bedroom was cluttered as well, and the bed was buried under all the junk and garbage. Believe me, she slept every night, during all those years, in a junky, decaying, full of corrosion - and obviously, not working - late 1970's/early 1980's small FIAT automobile, an automobile that was somewhere in the middle of all that mess.

When the public authorities arrived to clean the house, both mother and son made a lot of protest, crying that the city authorities were "violating their rights" . I don't remember exactly, but the TV news guy said that something like 300 TONS of junk and garbage were retrieved from that house that day. I remember that they needed several trucks to do that job.

My grandparents also used to store a lot of junk on their backyard. But not even close to that old lady's level!!!

I remember that at one time, they had many old and useless washing machines and dish washers outside their house. Every time a washer broke beyond repair, after they bought a new one, instead of sending the old one to the dumpster, they simply let the old one sit on their backyard. They also had other types of junk there as well.

One day, my mother paid a cleaning company to clean all that mess on her parents backyard. It took the cleaning company a whole afternoon to do the job.

There was, still, one spot left untouched: an old and ugly wood house that they have on the back of their backyard. There was also a lot of unhealthy stuff on the basement of that house. An uncle of mine cleaned that himself some weeks ago. The level of junk that was there was also hard to believe: from old 1970's car wheels to lots and lots of rotting pieces ( big pieces ) of wood, pieces large enough to make another house. Those pieces of wood were rotting from both humidity and rat urine. My uncle said that my grandfather kept those pieces of wood since the 1960's . There were a lot of rats ( big rats ) in there as well. One of them was already dead.

[Lady Ayeka]

this whole affair is definitely strange, huh! anyhow, this may be the only time any of us ever gets to see anything like this, so please enjoy...


-ZENITH HO901J-

[Captain Video]

Someone in this forum should grab that Zenith!!! Starting bid is really cheap on this one!!!

[Joel Cairo]

They did quite well with the Dynaco 3X:

http://cgi.ebay.com/VIRGIN-DYNACO-DY...QQcmdZViewItem

Wish my old one had been worth that much!

-Kevin

[drh4683]

Wow, amazing what the stuff will go for if its "new in the box". That zenith TV if used but still mint condition without the box would have been passed on for a 9.99 opening bid. This guy is going to make a fortune selling all this NIB stuff.

[geespot]

I bought one of his Sherwood receivers he had up last week. I will post pictures once I receive it. I looked at his current auctions and he has a unbuilt Heath monoblock, he took the tubes out and selling them in a different auction.

[Rental Limo]

I would of been in heaven with the old washing machines in the backyard! Scrap steel is at is highest right now. My brother has connections through his work that gives him free steel which he scraps. The steel is going to pay for his Canada fishing trip. The other day i picked up a washer dryer pair for scrap. The washer is an old Maytag that works! That one im keeping, and im not going to mention what im going to do with that one here. I can only give a clue. Making $$$$$$$!

[Jeffhs]

Years ago (starting in the late 1960s), when I lived in a Cleveland suburb, I collected old TVs I would find in my neighbors' trash. Kept the sets in my basement. Many of the sets worked, but some of them were beyond repair and were used strictly for parts to keep the good ones going. Had to dispose of all but three, however, when I moved in 1972. The rest of the sets in the basement of my former home were trashed (not by my own choice); there were other circumstances as well that forced me to give up those sets, many of which would have been collectible antiques today.

I moved again in 1999 to a small apartment in another town, which meant having to dispose of even more stuff when I arrived at the new place (I had moved back to the other house in 1975, but had to move out 24 years later). I now collect small vintage radios, mostly Zenith but I do have two Sony portables and an Aiwa AR-115 AM/FM set as well; they take up much less room than TVs and use less power to boot--my Zenith MJ1035 FM stereo radio draws only 52 watts, for example, and the transistor sets draw far less. My collection fits neatly into the bedroom, nothing disorganized (I am a very organized person and often wonder about folks who let their homes/apartments get so cluttered with junk that the authorities eventually must intervene).

BTW, people who "collect" animals may have serious mental problems and/or do not realize that such a hobby can be a health hazard as well as a public nuisance, not to mention the expense of feeding the animals and so on. There should be a law (there probably is one on the books in most states) against hoarding animals in cities, I once heard (I think it was on a television show or the evening news years ago) about an elderly woman who lived alone in a large city, and had hundreds (!) of cats. (I bet the local health department told her in no uncertain terms to do something about that in a hurry, or else.) Cats are wonderful pets (I have one myself), but they do make messes on occasion and need to be fed regularly, among other things, so most of us cannot afford to have anywhere near "hundreds" of cats in our homes. Moreover, I do not think most apartment landlords would approve of a tenant that had an unreasonable number of cats. Many landlords simply do not allow pets in their buildings, but there are exceptions. The exceptions come at a price, though--the tenant must pay a pet deposit ahead of the first month's rent in most cases. I know of at least one person in this building, however, who has more than one cat, but she isn't collecting them so she is in the clear.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by drh4683

Wow, amazing what the stuff will go for if its "new in the box". That zenith TV if used but still mint condition without the box would have been passed on for a 9.99 opening bid. This guy is going to make a fortune selling all this NIB stuff.

That set was misrepresented. It is not a "Space Command" portable, as there is no remote (none of those small 12" b&w Zenith portables had remote control). These sets sold for very low prices when they were new (I bought one at a discount appliance store 30 years ago for $62), so they did not have much in the way of bells and whistles (remote control or anything else). IMHO, the seller is probably trying to make this set seem more important than it is, or probably ever was.