Ping pong tables join non-slate pool tables on the list.
Some types of bicycles, esp. kids’ bikes, can be easily gotten for free.
Not sure if either would be considered “expensive”.
Note that several items listed are no longer generally sold new if at all. E.g., CRT TVs, VHS VCRs, printed encyclopedias. If these were considered fair to mention, we could really go on and on. E.g., I just “retired” today an analog DVR. Cost quite a bit new (although I bought it 2nd hand for very little). That makes two I need to chuck. Can’t really buy those new for the most part, but if you do find one, it isn’t going to be expensive now.
(Encyclopedias are the pits. It looks like our only option is the recycling bin. No one takes them, no one wants them. But the covers have to torn off first. Shudder.)
Lots of technology products can be had for free after about ten years. Much of it still works just as well as it did when it was new, it just pales in comparison to the current new stuff.
Above-Ground pools - they will try for a couple of weeks to get a token payment, then give up
As mentioned, home gym equipment - what is the sales pitch for this stuff? “Think of the membership money you’ll save!” Ummm… gym membership is so valuable they give it away…
Go around to estate sales at ending time - that’s when they’re passing out everything they couldn’t get a dollar for an hour earlier. Never done, don’t know what’s left - but I’m guessing the foodstuff in the pantry and utensils - kitchen and small hand tools. Can’t imagine te old yard ornaments (concrete ducks, etc) being big sellers.
I picked up a nice oil-filled heater from the curb - figured it needed a new plug. Nope, it just had no easy way to move it - I put a loop of clothesline rope through a couple of fins (foremost and aftmost) and have an easily transported heater.
See Craigslist “Free Stuff” - lalrge apppliances are amazingly common - I’m guessing somebody bought a new house and wanted new appliances, so the stuff left by seller is surplus with no place to store.
I got a free GPS from someone at work. Top of the line when it was purchased, but it couldn’t be updated, so completely out of date now. Still useful to me, but there were a few times when the GPS showed that I was driving across farmers fields even though I was still on the highway and kept directing me to exit. I offered to pay him for it but he said anything I could give him would be so little as to be insulting (compared to what it was new) or so much I could get a new one for the same price.
Also got a big tv for free. One of the big boxy ones - again, no-one wants them when flat screens are so cheap now.
We gave away a player piano and a commercial slate pool table when we moved a couple of years ago. Couldn’t sell them for even $100 bucks. Luckily the pool table only cost us 200 bucks to begin with.
It’s hard to get rid of heavy, space intensive stuff.
Food. Go to a park after the Sunday picnics, and check out the trash cans. You’ll be amazed what people throw away. I got an untouched home-baked pecan pie once out of the trash after a church picnic at a park in South Carolina. Once in Quebec, after a surprise rain at a provincial park on Labor Day, I found steaks still in the supermarket wrapper, jettisoned as picnickers ran for shelter. On a weekday, if there has been a school outing at a nature or historical site, the kids will have thrown away most of the nutritious goodies their moms packed for them.
Cars - Vehicles are often donated for scrap, even expensive ones.
Military surplus - You can go to auctions get things that the government paid through the nose for for nothing except shipping fees.
Tires - Vehicle tires can be received for free after they have some use on them. If you remove a slew of used tires from a property, you might even be paid to do so.
Houses - In Detroit, Camden, E. Saint Louis, there are homes which you can buy for $1 which can then be stripped of their component elements and then those elements can be resold for a profit. This means that you have earned more than you paid for the property thus making it free.
You can also live in these properties; however that removes the “free” element from them.
Almost all the hardwood furniture in our house was free. We lived in a large apartment complex for years. Every day people moving in or out would leave furniture out by the dumpsters. Most of it was crap, but every other week or so I’d find a great piece of hardwood furniture that was slightly scratched or worn, or with a broken leg support or something. I’d put it in my garage and sand and restain it when I had time. Some of these pieces are really good quality and will last hundreds of years.
We got a new fridge on Friday, and I stored all our frozen food in the back yard, where I think it was actually colder than the freezer in the fridge.
I would really like to have a treadmill - I’ll pick one up used someday. I’ll benefit from someone else’s New Year’s resolution.
We’re looking at cutting up and hauling away the antique player piano we have in our house - we can’t give it away, and I don’t want to pay $1000 to move it. I think pianos might be the winner of this thread - you really can’t give them away any longer.
Old furniture can be great - hardly any new furniture is solid wood, and not much of it is built to last.
Another thing I like to pick up for a song is gardening equipment or tools. The new stuff breaks after three uses; the old stuff last forever.
Part of it, as I understand it, is that pianos have a fairly fixed lifespan before big things start going wrong with them - actions wear out, tuning pegs no longer hold, pads dry out and crack or disintegrate, etc. It’s about 40-45 years before even a well-maintained piano needs major overhaul. We’re well into that period for pianos bought when they were considered a household essential AND came down in price, so it’s not a matter of a small number of useful 88’s no longer finding homes; it’s a glut of fairly cheap, worn-out pianos having no further use except to hold family pictures. They can’t be kept in playable condition any more and aren’t worth the major repairs. Only the truly musician/orchestral grade ones are worth the overhaul - not the thousands and thousands of home-grade ones.
Maybe you got the superduper model, but I got one of those, new, in 2010 for $1000 including the shipping. It’s a different brand, but it’s essentially the one on the left here with some minor additions and subtractions.
And your kids’ MMV, but the Firebug turns 7 this summer, and I expect this is the last year he’ll spend significant time on it.
