[Christ]

'bout the same here... first thing I ever found was an SNES game system new in the box. My guess is some brat kid wanted a Sega Genesis instead. Took that puppy home and played it for days on my curb-find TV.

Later, I got involved in a league of "bad" kids... we used to go through dumpsters and stuff just to cause trouble, but it would always yield interesting finds.

After that period in my life, it was just a matter of remembering all that stuff that I had found previously, and voila!

At some point, I introduced by wife to it by taking her for walks through Endicott, NY on garbage night. She started pointing out "stuff" that we needed in the apartment, so I'd just pick it up and carry it across town back to the apartment.

We still have a good bit of that stuff, even after giving away a large portion of the things we had.