The best thing I ever randomly found on the street was a beautiful crystal chandelier that I sold for about $500.
This was in 1979, during the early years of our marriage, when we didn’t have much money. In fact, we were pretty poor. I would get up early on trash day and drive around the nicer neighborhoods, looking for things people had thrown away that I could clean up, repair, and sell.
Some people might have been embarrassed to do that. I wasn’t. When you’re young, newly married, and trying to build a life, pride doesn’t pay the bills. I saw opportunity in the things other people no longer wanted. One person’s trash really could be another person’s grocery money.
Then one morning, there it was—a gorgeous crystal chandelier sitting along the curb as if it were nothing more than an old bag of trash. I couldn’t believe someone was throwing it away. I carefully loaded it into my vehicle, took it home, cleaned it up, and eventually sold it for around $500.
To put that into perspective, $500 in 1979 would be worth roughly $2,300 today. It was a tremendous amount of money for us at the time. It could cover bills, buy groceries, or simply give us some much-needed breathing room. It honestly felt as though I had struck gold.
When I think about that chandelier today, however, I don’t really think about the money. I think about those early mornings, driving around while most people were still asleep, doing whatever I could to help us get ahead. I think about how little we had, how hard we worked, and how we slowly built our life together—one discarded treasure at a time.
That chandelier didn’t just light up someone’s home. For a short time, it helped light the way forward for us.
I’ve owned and sold many things worth far more since then, but I don’t think anything ever made me feel quite as rich as finding that chandelier on the side of the road.
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