make money-money make money-money-money

A rare find indeed. No less than 14 bucks in silver dollars.

With all this donated loot, we could buy about 8 cups of coffee or 2 bowls of pho or almost 2 chicken sandwiches or 3 pound of salad or, like, 14 different chinese food servings. We're rich!

the Most Donated Book

While Apollo 13, My Best Friends Wedding, and Titanic battle it out to be "the most donated copies of a VHS video in the store at one time" champion, there is no contest as to which is the most commonly donated book...

Love It or Leave It

You have got to love all this over-the-top post 9-11 "patriotic" crap that's floating around these days. We're still getting lots of those flags that clip onto your car's windows. Now here's another patriot classic:

This T-shirt is extra awesome because of the "2008" date on it. This ain't some non-free freedom from back in 1997! This is 2008's freedom that isn't free here.

The "Freedom is Not Free" merch usually emphasizes the "Not" part somehow, as well. 

DVNF is the Disabled Veterans National Foundation. I want to be clear that my ridicule of these "Freedom is Not Free" products is in no way intended to disrespect veterans in any way. But, c'mon, there has got to be a more dignified way to show support for the men and women defending our country than "Freedom is NOT Free 2008". 

Leave a Message

The Jammer has done it again. Instead of just throwing a big bag of dusty old audio cassettes into the already overcrowded cassette drawers, or maybe the dumper, he checks them all out to see if we are lucky enough to come across any of these:

An old school answering machine message cassette. It is pretty rare to find one so clearly labeled (and this one was full on both sides!), and it is really, really rare to actually get a juicy message, but when it happens it makes this whole shit job worth while.

We have also gotten in the habit of plugging in an listening to any phones with a built-in digital answering machines. 9 out of 10 of these usually have messages still on them as well.

Burnt

Some crazy person out there is saving all of their used match sticks, cramming them into snack size ziplock bags, donating it to the junk store, and deducting it from their taxes.

Junk Pirate zine #17

Junk Pirate #17 is available right now. 22 pages in thrilling black and white. Heavy duty cover stock. Made entirely with and from items donated to the junk store. Featuring the already infamous "Sack O' Sauce in a Can O' Meat"! Available now at better zine shops for $3, or get your direct from our allies at Rowan Morrison Publishing and save a buck. ORDER IT NOW! 

If you don't want to pay for priority mail shipping for just one zine, throw in the Junk Pirate Volume One book. Featuring the best of issues 1-12 plus other stuff that will please you greatly. 

You've been Lumberjacked!

A top candidate for Junk Pirate toy of the month goes to this mini Bosch kiddie chainsaw.

Fire this bad boy up and it makes realistic chain saw sounds and has a real rotating chain. Perfect for re-enacting scenes from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Who will survive their AM break (recently reduced to 10 minutes), and what will be left of them. 

If you think this toy is harmless, just check out this report from UC Irvine that discusses the "lifelong harm" that the Bosch Replica Chainsaw will do to your child's hearing at a whopping 95 decibels! Yeeeeeeeaaaaaah!

Antlers N' Horns

A couple of antlers and a piece of the devil's skull. 

Mini Mint

Some tiny coins from the Mini Mint.

While this set of 6 little coin replicas is cute and pretty unique to the junk store, I think it is the little touches that make it blog worthy. 

First off, I'm all for things labeling themselves as "collectors item". Anybody could just spray about the phrase "collectors item" in promotional materials (I do it myself all the time), but it takes a special kind of marketing wizard to actually print "collectors item" right on the item itself.

Even better, is the use of the phrase "presidential", which I image is referencing the fact that US currency (and thus tiny replicas of US currency) has images of a president on it. In fact, I think I'm going to start referring to all my money as "presidential". Except, of course, the ten and one hundred dollar bills, which don't feature presidents. 

Come to think of it, I believe the Susan B Anthony silver dollar is part of this here Mini Mint Collectors Item, and she wasn't a president. What the hell?!?

And speaking of studpidly marketed Presidential Collectors Item coin sets, when is someone going to donate one of those cheap-ass Obama commemorative coin sets that Montel Williams endorsed?

Smokey Sue Smokes For Two

So, so, so awesome. An educational aid that is intended to show the damage smoking can do to your unborn child. It's basically a jar with a little girl doll head that has a squeezy suction bulb pump that can suck smoke from a lit cigarette into a submerged fetus in the jar. The smoke gets exhaled by the fetus.  It doesn't really show anything but the how cool even a pregnant cabbage patch kid can look while smoking. I suppose that, if enough cigarettes are smoked through this device, the water gets a little yellow.

Seriously, I could spend all day feeding cigarettes into this doll's jar-body fetus. It is just hypnotic. 

You can buy yours here for over 200 dollars! Cigarettes not included.

The Pharm System

 

One of the best and brightest Junk Store collections is the Jammer's hoard of Pharmaceutical Company Drug Pens. He just loves to roll up his sleeves and dig deep into the pen drawer in search for Pharm Pen treasure. It seems like he can dig up a pharm pen or three every try. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the other wonderful Promotional Drug products we have flowing in all the time. These doctors have it made. 

Zmax tape dispensers.

Tagamet Safe lock box

Chrolomycetin (distinguished for its versatility) ruler, Evoxac paper, and a vintage Septra memo pad. We got it all.

This one is good: a Fortaz ruler with stencils of very stylized breast and penis. How did the medical profession get by before something like this was given to them.

Welp, it looks like it is all about to change. According to a recent article in the NY Times, all free doctor gifts from the Pharmaceutical industry have been banned. Yup, the party is over. This shocking blow was eased a little bit by this awesome picture that was linked from the article...

Now, that is a Pharm Pen collection.  Or at least it was until it got taken off the internet. Damn. Here, I found another picture:

Game On: Guitar Hero, GameGear, & Atari

I'm never not excited to get some video game gear here at the Junk Store. Whatever you got; vintage Atari, handheld games, Nintendo cereal, or perhaps some fresh Xbox games... I'll eat 'em all up. Let us now take a look at some recent gaming donations.

Guitar Hero 1 for the Playstation 2. Complete with guitar, guitar strap, and game disc. Used, but still in the box. Guitar Hero is such an awesome game, except when you get stuck on some song that you've never heard of form one of these newfangled hipster emo "metal" bands and you just have to listen to that garbage over and over while you try to beat it. Still, when you finally get that song, man, it feels good.

Check it out. It's a generic Atari 2600 controller in the box. This goes next to this on the Junk Pirate shelf.

Sega Game Gear. This was a full color, cartridge based portable video game system that was completely obliterated in popularity by Gameboy. It's pretty beefy.

The motherload. A fat box of vintage Atari VCS (aka 2600) games. In the mix we also have some racing controllers, a bunch of manuals, a few Sega Genesis games, and a rare Atari 5200 controller! There was even an ultra rare Atari 7800 game cartridge. Not a bad haul.

a Jedi craves not these things

Star Wars talking Yoda doll. 

One vintage Star Wars item is worth about 100 new trilogy items (or "jar-jars" as I like to call them). Therefore, this talking Yoda, with Star Wars trivia and rambling stories of the Clone Wars at the press of a hand, will have to do for now.

Twelve Inch Double Faced: The Flexi-Vinyls

Another great collection...

A fistfull of Flexi records. You know, those flexible plastic record sheets often with advertising promotion songs or Nat Geo recordings. They are often on clear sheets. Anybody know if there is anybody who still manufactures these?

Ghostbusters II back there.

Free demonstration recording and invitation.

SpaceSounds. Say no more.

link: the Internet Museum of Flexi-Cardboard-Oddity Records.

Damn you, Sausage Fingers!

Anybody who is anybody collects things in jars. Probably the most classic jarred collection would be the old dice jar. Started way back at the "old" Junk Store, we have kept a dice jar going in some capacity or another for years now. Regular white six sided, D&D, red casino dice, dice with letters on them, novelty sex dice, those backgammon dice that go 2-4-8-16-32-64... whatever you got, we'll take it from you and put it in a jar.

Then, one terrible day, old Sausage Fingers got an inkling to shit in my cereal and she up and dumped the dice jar into a white box (probably couldn't fit her fat sausage fingers in the jar) and tried to sell 'em. She also dissed the collection of Rubik's Cubes, Magic 8-balls, and some other good bits.

Luckily, Top Cat spotted my dice and salvaged what he could. So I just packed-up all my hoarded treasure and brought it home. I'm happy to say the dice jar lives on back at Junk Pirate headquarters.

The Dice Jar stays... you go!

and here is a bonus look at some vintage dice jar action:

Balls

A portion of the ever growing (and lately forced into hiding) rubber ball collection:

I remember a time when they sold rubber balls in vending machines. It seems like they have lost popularity in the modern era. Maybe it is the 95% likely hood that a child will put it in their mouth and probably choke. Maybe it is these newfangled "video" games. Whatever the cause, the Jammer and I are bringing them back. Big time.

Preserves

Here is something pleasant:

You guessed it. A mouse. In a loosely sealed jar. Preserved in what I hope is formaldehyde or maybe 100% alcohol.  You would not believe the fight that took place over who got to keep this hideous thing. Of course, this isn't the first preserved-animal-in-a-jar we have gotten, just the first I got a picture of.

Black Widow and the Spider Wars

So one day Top Cat and the Jammer are unloading bucket after bucket of dusty hand tools (mostly screwdrivers and wrenches) from the truck when they discover this little guy chilling in one particularly crusty bin.

It's a fucking Black Widow spider. I kid you not. At first I thought it was just another false alarm, like when Racing Thoughts Simpson mistakes every bug for a Brown Recluse Spider. But, sure enough, there was the telltale red hourglass shape on the abdomen. After spending half an hour rounding old Spidey up and getting him (or her) into a jar with air holes poked into the lid and some fake plant matter for it crawl on, the rest of the day was spent hunting live bugs and flies for it to eat.

When Top Cat captured another, non Black Widow spider, it was thrown into the arena and thus began Spider Wars.

Surprisingly, the Black Widow was defeated and killed pretty early in the competition. Still, it was fun having a lethal arachnid as a pet for a week or so.

It can be a little hard to see in these photos, what with the glass distortion and the spider spending its time clinging to the lid, but I promise you that is a black widow.

Fountain of Yay-Yeah!

This is what we do with our work day. We take a broken fountain, fix the pump (it usually just needs some new tubing), add some rocks, and throw in an action figure or two, dump a cup of water in there, and  -ta-da- you have a tranquil scene of an ogre peeing his pants. 

Old School Video Camera

No, I'm not talking about Hi8, or regular 8mm, or even that strange VHS-C thing that had a mini-cassette that you then had to put into a larger cassette adapter. I'm not even talking about the full on VHS 1/2" cassette holding camera. I'm taking this one way back to the days when the video camera was a whole separate unit from the recorder, which was like a giant machine you had to carry on a bag strapped around your shoulder. If you are under the age of 30, you probably don't even remember these monsters. Well a recent donation is here to take us back...

It's the Panasonic Newvicon Omnipro Color Video Camera PK-957. From 1983. The only things missing are the microphone, a rhinestone glove, a baby-on-board sign, and  your trapper-keeper. 

Then, not a fortnight later did we get this donation...

It's another non-recording video camera. This time from Hitachi.

6 Years without a non-recording consumer video camera from the 80s and then, wham, back-to-back.

Hot Plug-In : Cold Beer

Another good plug-in coming at you. Cold Beer. These night-lights are making me thirsty.

Mace in your Face

And now we conclude this lengthy exploration of the Junk Store arsenal with a recent contribution that has tremendous potential to go horribly awry:

Yup. As if live ammunition wasn't terrifying enough, some smart person decided to include a half-used canister of pepper spray in with their donation of keychains, pins, and buttons. Mother fucking 10% Pepper Spray. And the Jammer was brave (or stupid) enough to give it a test sprits. Well done, people. Well done.

Full Metal Jacket

This is where things REALLY start to get all messed up. Live ammo. I shit you not, live ammo. What kind of disturbed individual donates hundreds of new bullets. How could this not end in a Junk Pirate or two getting shot?

We got your 9mm and 380 Autos. Plenty for everybody. 

A teacher could use this for an art project.

I know I like to joke about all the crazy donations coming into the Junk Store, but this one goes a little to far. I mean, bullet shells are cool, but live ammo?!? Are you people nuts?!?