Already it is 3;30 am, and the light in the sky is recycled light reflected from the moon. I am light headed, light hearted and thinking of ways to increase my recycling income with lighter materials. Recycling seems to have an inverse age-weight relationshsip: when I was twenty, seventy pounds seemed light. Now that I am 70+, twenty pounds seems heavy.
I have always liked recycling home clothes dryers. They are lightweight, easy to lift, and since lightweight, the money they bring is no strain on the wallet, and you don't have to waste time looking for some place to spend it.
The treasure hunting aspect of home clothes dryer recycling is often overlooked, or maybe unknown. Back in the Great Old
Days when steel was half a cent per pound, copper was 15-25 cents per pound, and gasoline was under 4 cents per pound or 25 cents per gallon, a fellow could strenuously make five dollars in a day by "junking". That would buy him a 15 cent cola, a twenty-nine cent McBurger, and fill his tank up with gasoline to repeat the Hunt-N-Haul game.
Clothes dryers used to be constructed so that they worked until they broke or died or didn't work. This meant the rollers got rolled and worn; the shaft bearings got warn so that the tub got wobbly and that created a tiny gap in the seals of the lint catcher or the barrel edges. This allowed coins, diamond rings, and other things to slip out of the tumbler into oblivion when the pockets were not emptied. (NO, this is not where missing socks ent er the fifth dimension). Did I mention that paper Federal Reserve notes and even an occasional silver certificate redeemable for actual silver could be recovered when dismantling a clothes dryer.
Now that I am doing e-scrap, I keep reading about these bitcoins. So far I haven't found any, no matter how much crypto-mining scrap I have handled. I don't even know what a bitcoin looks like. I thought I had found one, once, but it was jut an ugly coin that looked like a stop sign with Susan B. Anthony's visage on it, the size of a good ole two-bit coin that inspired the mantra of the 20th century: "shave and a haircut, two bits"
But I haven't given up on my search for the illusive (illusionary) bit coin, even though I haven't heard even a single tinkle when I shake the mining scrap. I read how hundreds and thousands of crypto-mining machines have to run for days and weeks doing useless work (is that a new trend, replacing mining employeees who do nothing useful but lean on their shovels with machines who do nothing useful but lean on their electrons?).
But I will keep on looking, hoping, and maybe one day, find a shiny newly minted bitcoin that dropped thru the cracks in an old burnt-out cryptomining board. Or, (why do sobering thoughts always make one wish to go get drunk) or, sobering thought, I may discover there ain't never been no bitcoin coins, just a lot of hot air coming from a box.

I wish there was a like fuction on this board, but there is not. So I'm replying to say I really enjoyed this post.

lol




I really did find a sock outside the drum once.
Coins are the most common.

And just to show that it’s not all hot air, …

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The most shocking statement here is the $0.29 McBurger. Now, you need a home equity loan for a 10 piece meal...
I guess we're all here because we have common interests, in this case e-waste, but as one gets older, one tends to look back on simpler times (sometimes in anger, to the dismay of Liam Gallagher).
I subconsciously started doing business in e-waste specifically to find old parts, and while businesses have to make money and are profit driven, I still really only care about finding and preserving the PDP-11's of the world (and others).
Sounds like the humble washtub is your Rosebud. May you find one soon that contains many (physical) Bitcoins, or at the very least, a USB drive with a digital wallet full of imaginary ones.

My thing is analogue audio and video. And the 8-bit era.
Where most things can be fixed and broken is low cost for parts.
Like you can use a trs or TI or Tandy or Tmx etc (lol) to fix an Apple 2.
You can borrow parts from an RCA to fix a royal. Etc
And a Sanyo to fix a Sony.

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You should come by the warehouse sometime, I have a ton of stuff you would like.
Speaking of Tmx, I recently added a composite out to my ZX81 for no real reason.

Because you could, and why not?? No really? Why not??

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If you're looking for an answer to your question: because this is America!
What's nice about the ZX81, for this particular one, I tracked the original owners daughter (the owner is long deceased) because it also came with some rare peripherals that I have since send to a Sinclair museum in Portugal and I had some questions... this unit was shipped as a kit from the UK.
Point is, by modifying it, I also got to stick it to the Brits. Bonus Points.