DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH AND TUMBLE
RICHARD ODDSON wheels a baby carriage full of salvaged miscellanea to Wesley Urban Ministries on a recent sun-drenched afternoon.
He has his eye on a computer processor in a shopping cart parked outside the Ferguson Avenue North social services hub.
Oddson hopes to buy it off the finder to harvest the tiny gold pins in its chips.
But no dice. Two men who hauled the hardware from a CityHousing highrise on King Street East don’t want to part with it.
Oddson, 27, has already collected what he estimates to be 35-40 pounds of copper cable and aluminum cans to take to Wentworth Metal Recycling several blocks north of Wesley.
(The Wentworth Street North business is a popular drop-off spot for scrappers. The general manager declined to comment for this story. “I don’t get involved.”)
Oddson figures today’s load will fetch him about $35. He uses the earnings to supplement his disability pension.
“It pays all right for something that you’ve chosen to do on your own.”
His apartment is packed — neatly, he points out — with the items he’s collected. It’s not all bottles and copper wiring. One prized find is a Second World War ammunition crate.
“It’s a British-made one. It’s an anti-tank, M153 mine crate,” he says, bringing up a photo on his cellphone.
He’d been looking for one to take camping. “Somebody literally threw it out right in front of me.”
A vintage, brass wine opener also comes to mind. “It’s worth a pretty penny.” But the item with the greatest monetary value?
That has to be the $1,000 Japanese-made drone found not too far from his home, Oddson says.
“Funnily enough, just right around the corner and across the street from my place.”
It’s not always that easy. It’s a good deal of effort with modest rewards.
IAN BARTELS, the president of Budget Iron and Metals, appreciates that.
“Those people are working pretty hard for not a lot of money, I’ll tell you that.”
Scrappers show up at the gates of the Sherman Avenue North yard all-day long, six days a week.
“They come in there and haul their stuff blocks away, halfway across the city.”
Subsistence scrappers represent a small piece of his business, Bartels says.
The $35 Oddson estimated he’d receive is on the “high end” of the spectrum for small-time players, Bartels says.
Still, for some, the stakes are high — high enough for tempers to flare.
Oddson recalls telling one trash trawler he’d already searched a spot. It was a courtesy to save him time.
He took it the wrong way. “This guy pulled out a machete.”
Oddson backed away that time, but says he’s prepared if push comes to shove.
“I just carry around a tool that can basically double as a defence mechanism.”