5 surprising items that were mistakenly thrown away
Ever thrown away something important by accident? Chances are it wasn't nearly as bad as these stories of valuable items that ended up in the trash.
A prosthetic leg…a ring…a kidney…say what? We throw junk away every day, but have you ever tossed something by accident? Perhaps you’ve never thrown away something that valuable, but others have. Here are some strange-but-true stories about discarded items that should never have been destined for the dump:
Artificial leg
How does this happen? There was an account of a Florida man seen digging through the dump for his prosthetic leg. It seems his wife accidentally threw it out! Luckily for the man, he managed to find it.
Wedding ring
A veterinarian from Oklahoma City lost his wedding ring while performing surgery on a dog. He had taken the ring off and placed it on a table and it somehow got thrown away. But that didn’t stop him from searching for it at the dump. Incredibly, the man managed to find his wedding ring. At 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, we experienced a similar story where a customer asked us to remove a piece of furniture that she forgot contained her rings. When she later realized what had happened, she frantically called us to see if we still had the item. The franchise owner went through the entire truckload of junk and managed to retrieve the rings!
Lottery tickets
A man from Pennsylvania accidentally threw away not one, but twenty-five lottery tickets, each worth $50,000. His total loss was $1.25 million! The man would play the same numbers every day but didn’t always cross-reference to see if he’d won.
Kidney
Back in 2013, a nurse from Ohio threw out a kidney. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, she mistook the kidney for medical waste during an unfortunate kidney transplant.
Valuable art
A cleaning lady at an Italian art gallery threw out a number of expensive art pieces when she mistook it for garbage. Granted, the modern art–including pieces of cookies–was supposed to look like trash, considering it was intended to make an environmental statement. It was a costly mistake–the pieces were estimated to be worth roughly $15,000!
Frequently asked questions
We price based on how much space your items take up in the back of our truck, broken down into ⅛, ¼, ½, ¾ of a truckload, all the way up to a full truckload. Our trucks hold the equivalent of seven pickup trucks.
Our prices vary based on location and there is a minimum charge for our teams to remove your items, which is different in each location, based on a number of factors, including local disposal and recycling fees.
We offer single item pricing for certain items such as mattresses or TVs, sometimes this will be less than our minimum charge.
For materials that have a heavy cubic weight like dirt, concrete, and gravel, pricing is based on the total volume that the material takes up in the truck, up to a maximum of one foot in height for a full truck.
Watch us load up a truck to see how our standard pricing works!
If you need service weekly, monthly, or quarterly, we offer bulk pricing discounts. This gives you better value compared to common alternatives, such as dumpsters or less professional junk removal services.
Interested? Call our business account team at 1-888-475-3461 to discuss your needs as well as pricing options.
On the day of your appointment with us, our friendly, uniformed truck team members will give you a call or text 25-30 mins before we arrive to let you know we’re on our way.
Whether your business has a single location or multiple locations, we can create a custom junk removal solution that works for you. We can coordinate pickups at multiple locations at a local, regional, and national level. Rather than work with dozens of regional or local companies, let 1-800-GOT-JUNK? handle the jobs across all your locations.
Absolutely! We take large items all the time. As long as it can be lifted and loaded into the truck by two people, we'll be happy to take it away for you!
We work with all types of businesses and can handle any type of job - cleanouts, bulk item removal, general junk removal and even specific items like cardboard or pallets. We can take pretty much anything as long as it's not toxic or hazardous. We can remove your items from wherever they’re located, whether it’s your office, store, site or anywhere else—all you have to do is point!
Yes, we're fully licensed, bonded and insured! We have insurance covering damages to both persons and property for every single booking.
While we don't quite service the entire map, we cover almost every greater metropolitan area across the US, Canada, and Australia. To see if we’re in your neighborhood, you can start a booking by entering your zip code here.
Our customer service center is open 24/7, so we’re here whenever you need us! While operating hours may vary in our franchise locations, we offer same-day and off-hours service, including weekends.
