A couple of Le Creuset pans, which we are still using years later.
Also, donkey’s years ago, some Arthur Ransome hardback childrens’ books. I walked 100 yards to the nearest bookshop & got a fiver for them. Probably about £25 in today’s money.

By the way, since we’re all law abiding citizens on here 😉 I’m guessing we all asked the property owner’s permission before liberating our booty?

I didn’t the first time (about 10 Victorian floorboards), but was quickly informed by a friend it was the legal thing to do – so when we revisited the skip we asked the guy and basically took everything that he had left…

By the way, since we’re all law abiding citizens on here I’m guessing we all asked the property owner’s permission before liberating our booty?

A mate got a caution for ‘theft’ after taking stuff from a skip, his missus wasn’t impressed when the Police turned up at his house asking who owned the vehicle on his drive, so good advice.

I used to work next to Homebase.
And in most cases if someone had something and it went wrong then they would just throw it in the skip.
I had brand new drills,lights,christmas trees and lights,phones,garden table and chairs,parasol,garden bench,kingsize sleigh bed and so on.
Good findings!

Some pallets.
.
2 friends and me were walking home one night, spotted a load of pallets in a skip and thought they would be great for the bonfire.
One friend and I each took two, the other friend has his knackered commuter bike with him (had a front brake but no rear) so he only took one.
Got to the top of the hill (Kendrick Road in Reading for those who know it) He climbed aboard his bike and shot off down the hill, propelled at great speed by the extra weight of his pallet. He was however, holding it in his right, front brake, hand. Other friend and I laughed for a while and then realised he was heading for the A4, three lanes of busy main road which goes across the bottom of the hill, and he wasn’t going to stop. We gave chase shouting at him to drop the pallet. He was too drunk or too deaf to hear us. He was clearly going to die.
Just as he approached the A4 we heard the beep beep of the pedestrian lights to his right, the traffic stopped, he shot across the road, through the petrol station on the other side, missed all the pumps and the cars there and disappeared from our sight out of the other entrance to it.
We lived on that road, apparently he just coasted to a stop outside our house using his feet as brakes.

A Complete set of Sash windows from a house down the road which was being modernised.
I actually asked if hey were replacing the windows and If they were could I have the old ones ?

They said yes, so I actually went down and removed the sashes intact from the windows when they were ready to fit the new ones.

Saved them Skip volume, saved risking them getting damaged 😀

They were float glass, same as My house (Which has a different refractive index to modern glass therefore the light coming through is different) so I then removed all the replacement (Modern) panes of glass that had been put in over the years, and replaced with the rescued Float Glass.

The whole front of the house now has matching “Flawed / wobbly” glass in it and is much the better for it 8)

I`m sure my Ex appreciates it just as much as I did 😕

a 386, with a whopping 4MB of ram and an 80MB HD, in fully working order, might sound sh1t now but in 1992 it was still plenty usable!

you have that the wrong way round cr500dom, float glass is the modern ‘perfect’ stuff cos it is floated on liquid tin. the wobbly bubbly lovely stuff is cylinder glass as its blow into a cylinder, cut lenghtways and flattened

One of my mates, after a particularly heavy session.

We lifted him out, dusted him off and took him for a curry. He was as good as new!

A full Olympic weight set -20, 10, 5kg plates and bar 🙂

Where do i start…..

Food, booze, tools, UPVC window in “just the right size” for cellar in our old house, pots of new fence paint and my best so far

Was complete with a load of mixed up stuff on it. Now repainted and in the garage.

I love my job at times

a bag of 600 blue zip ties. that was about 8 years ago and i’m still working my way through them.

You lot live near some pretty generous skips!

I’ve only ever found mouldy carpets and rubble.

Just the other week i was clearing our house out and threw a crap old subwoofer that had been cluttering the garage up (only cost about £30 new). Last week i went to look for it to try and salvage an aux cable for my stereo and someboady had helped themselves to it. The thing is we live on a quiet cul-de-sac with an average of 80, so god knows who took it! probs the same people who also claimed my knackered old hybrid!

a terry dolan road frame with campag veloce and record on it, no wheels, from the local tip. asked the tip man who said help yourself. cheers, still riding it today 🙂

I found a computer desk in a layby .I have also made a profit from a bike shop who had a spec.hybrid on a heap after they told the owner it wasnt worth repairing .I put a new gear cable in it and got £60 for it ,and £25 for a plain gauge 531 frame they had as well !! Sack trucks from the tip last week along with a barbecue grill and a perfectly good disc hub front wheel for my single speed

Not actually from a skip, but a colleague offered me his Dad’s old bike just before he went to the dump. I tried not to sweat and stammer and I said “yes please”

(Colombus Genius tubing, full Campag Record including brakes and seatpost. Saddle and wheels added for the photo)

Our hockey team goalkeeper, a bit battered and broken.
It was night and he’d hit the mini-skip on the way home, it was unlit on the roadside, and he had been flipped OTB of his Honda 250 Wetdream into the mini-skip.
Handy really as we could just chuck the wet dream into it, one fewer in the world was a good thing, then got am ambleance to take him to A&E.

Mate pulled a Dean ti frame from a skip in London(swanky post code) many years ago.

You lot live near some pretty generous skips!

I’ve only ever found mouldy carpets and rubble.
I don’t know whether it’s false nostalgia or something, but the quality of skip finds has gone right down ime.

its hard to run with a binbag full of out-of-date malteasers in your hand. although they are lighter than ordinary chocalate

lol!

Timb, did you keep it? It’s bloody lovely that.

When I worked on the council yonks ago, the council ran the local tip & Black & Decker of Spennymoor used to use it. My boss was pretty handy & we’d get the nod off Sid who drove the bulldozer that B&D had been. Off we’d go & collect what we could, me & Ron made up loads of power tools from bits of motors, bodies, chucks, all sorts!

Me & my ex GF found a tall wrought iron garden gate complete with frame in a skip in Altea in Spain but we couldn’t get it all in the suitcase.

This Kef active subwoofer.. it needed a new thingybob to get it working, but the bit only cost 4p and my little brother did all the electrical engineering bit

Damaged bikes, gears, wheels – I dropped off at Bristol Bike Project (charity) many years ago.

All asked permission of the owner.

Best so far ( all from the same skip)
1 orange Alu elite
1 set of pace rc35s (seized)
1 Reynolds 531 road frame and fork
Many, many wheels.

Turned the Alu elite into a Frankenstein bike for my sister, and sold the rest to fund bike bits I would actually use!

200m2 of used hardwood parquet flooring from a bank.
I hired a van, filled it completely.
Used about 20m2 myself.
Sold the rest of it on eBay for £350.
Result.

Not a great find and not technically a skip but I went to ikea a while ago to get a floor standing lamp for the flat. Couldn’t really find one I liked, and the closest was about £100. I was going to get it but decided to check out what else I could find in town first and come back tomorrow if nothing else.

Went home and took the bins down to the bin store that evening, and sat in there was a floor standing lamp almost if not identical to the one in ikea. Win! It does make me feel a little bit pikey whenever I look at it though.

Stihl string trimmer left out on trash night in my neighborhood. Needed an $8 fuel line assembly, sell for $200+ new!

I actually got a business and a living from a skip – the bike shop I worked in as a student was closing down, and the owner chucked all the trade catalogues and price lists in the bin ready to set fire to them – I took a lot, phoned the companies up and pretended to be a proper company, and that was how I started my own business 😉

Got my pillar drill and the motor for my lathe, not quite from the skip as I intercepted them on the way… Got some funny looks walking into the office that day 😆

I have a Grass polygraph 7d, (lie detecter) i rescued from a certain place that shall remain undisclosed, kinda similar to this one below but with more fancy machined knobs and extra boards attachede,

It’s currently sitting in my back garden under poly wrap and when i get round to it i’m gonna remove the top half with all the cool knobs and buttons and either make a glass topped table out of it or just hang it on the wall and plug it in so it lights up, obviously i want it to light up once i’ve attached the electrodes to a mate beforehand so those 3 yrs i wasted at uni studying electronics will not have been in vain after all.

edit : not really relevant to a skip but 20 years ago i found a 25kg bale of weed washed up on the shoreline a few weeks after a major weed bust on a yacht in the irish sea …..that was a **** good summer for us all at that time, it still gets talked about to this day, needless to say i have hunted the shoreline ever since 😀 .

We used to pay the odd visit to what was the GT and Rockshox distribution place in Bristol as yoofs (Madison maybe?). I never got anything more than half a pair of gloves and scuffed grips. A mate managed a pair of SIDS back when we all rode RST 381s, lucky get.