OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Off Topics Mowers I Junked a Decade Ago.

I discovered these photos of a bunch of various mowers I had gathered ready to throw out as my collection was getting too large and had been damaged by the elements.

I also added a National VCR I had found in excellent physical condition but not working.

Did you at least part them out? or just got rid of them as they were?

I just disposed of them on the kerb. A man with a ute took them all.

Maybe I should have put a warning some viewers may find this distressing.

That's sad but good for whomever picked them up.He would have thought he was in heaven.

If you consider a bunch of rusty waterlogged mowers heaven? Some would call it hell once you get them home and realise the work required to get them running.

I'm a bit dismayed and a bit surprised at the lack of at least passing interest in the well preserved (since disposed of) Peter Allen special.
Doesn't anyone here recall the 1980s?

A local mower shop often throws out piles of old mowers into a skip to be taken to the metal recyclers. Sticking out the top of one skip I could not help noticing an old Victa 18 base and handlebars! Many of the other engine blocks and parts would have come off mowers as far back as the 1950s.

Perhaps it is true what they say, "One man's trash is another man's treasure".

Re the VCR, I recently took a ute load of 70s era RCA stereo hi-fi equipment, including a record player, an amp, an equalizer, tape deck, and a VCR, plus a bag full of cables and six speakers, to the Lifeline shop in town. They told me they did not want them as they have too many already and people only want to buy the "new stuff". They gave me directions to the local tip. Really annoyed me because they were all still in immaculate condition, unlike much of the broken, dirty and scratched scrap you see in charity shops.

The early made in Japan VCRs from the late 70s and early 1980s were built like a brick outhouse.
They weighed 3 times as much as the later built stuff for a reason.
Stereos such as Technics, Merantz and Pioneer were the best ever during this golden period of Japanese made home entertainment equipment.
Far superior to the plasticky Malaysian produced trinkets that are prolific in the charity shops today.

Where is this shop I'd like to have a look.?
...and yes Mowerfreak it would be heaven.I'm sure it would have been worth while.I love trying to save mowers that people have left for dead.Like my VC-160 Mark I,trashed but now it is restored.

There was a point where I thought I was the only person in the world who was fascinated with these things. If I had known there was a hidden scene of like minded people, I would have been motivated to pull all stops to ressurect them, even if it meant hiring storage space short term and/ or piling them carefully on top of each other ( using a newspaper between them to stop scratches), or even buying tents to keep them in.

Very true what you say. I always seem to strike some smart-alec 18 year old whenever I am trying to offload anything old at a charity shop. Of course to the majority of 18-35 year old persons these days, everything old is basically just junk - to be despised and dispensed with as soon as possible. When one such smart-alec told me to take my hi fi equipment to the dump, I remarked that I will take it back home and remove all of the screws first, to which he simply laughed as if to say "Why bother?"

Most of the younger generations would say "the old stuff is too big and takes up too much room". The concept of space is evidently a big sticking point with today's youth, who are more often than not forced to live in caravans, small units or shared housing, and tend to move house frequently.

I was also told once by a 20-odd year old that "it costs too much money to store old stuff today". The new equipment is so much smaller and cheaper. So from that point of view it is easier to just throw it away. I have known young couples who have regularly thrown away perfectly good clothes, cutlery and crockery, simply because it had piled up and they did not have the time to wash it! In their mind it was far more practical and economic to just bin it and go to the shop and buy new stuff. As incredible as this seems, I know it to be true as I have seen it happen with my own eyes. In one case a young couple had binned some quality Royal Doulton crockery that had been handed down to them from their parents. They then went out to the nearest "cheapie" shop to replace it with Made in China "equivalents". They simply did not place any value on the brand name, having become so accustomed to throwing out anything that was used and old and dirty.

This is so different to the attitude of my parents' generation who always salvaged whatever they thought might come in handy some rainy day. They saved their money and saved everything that might have a use in future. If you owned a shed well really it cost you nothing to keep stuff. Today there is not the same concept of time and I am convinced that many of today's youth live entirely for the present. Generally speaking very few save anything, let alone money. Many see no real hope of owning anything like a house in the future, so they just live for the day. They see the past as the "old days", and will sometimes reminisce about these times, which were surprisingly just 2-3 years ago. LOL!

It is an old mower shop in Toowoomba. Last time I was there the skips were all gone. I think the owners must have been having a clean up. The problem is you can expect to have to pay handsomely for anything, even if it is going to be thrown out.

Yeah, I sometimes think that my old man has a cardboard box fetish! He just can't bring himself to chuck them out, so the garage/workshop [which contains his boat; the cars have carports] is full of them.
The 'live day by day' thing is all that some of today's youngsters are capable of - all too many of them seem to have the attention span of a gnat.

G'day Gadge and all
From a cat's perspective, you just can't have enough boxes!
Trump Cat is concerned, though, about North Korea's use of Red Dot technology.

I think you have delivered a very quotable observation there.
I feel there must be a generation difference in how we value things.

This topic reminds me of ...

[video][/video]
Source:

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Jack

I refer to most young people as CRUs. Common Replaceable Units.
And to think I was recently asked defensively " what's wrong with millenials?" when I commented how insipid they are.
There are exceptions out there. I know of a 16 year old who follows older films such as Planet of the Apes ( the original 1968 version with Charlton Heston) and truly appreciates their style so there must be some insipid millenials out there who do like older quality equipment too.
There are plenty who like cars older than themselves so all is not lost.

Haha! I use to keep the boxes for everything at one time, just in case I ever had to return something. Often the boxes outlived the equipment!

And you never know when you might need a box to put something in or post something. lol!

A cockroach plague ten years back soon put an end to my box collection. They went for anything made of cardboard. So all of the boxes went to the dump and I never missed them. Haven't seen a roach since!

Evening Mowerfreak, vint_mow, Gadge, bumbly, Trump Cat, et al,

Trivia time: Without cheating and consulting the interweb, What is the name of the to show that the sketch came from??

While we are all being nostalgic I long for the golden era of British comedy!! Vale Spike, Peter Sellars, Eric Sykes, Ronnie Barker Graham Chapman etc, etc,

Personally I'm trying to give the millenials a bit of slack. I'm finding that a good many of them are such that I reckon the world is in capable hands with them in the future. Pray they make a better fist of things than we are at the moment. And those millenials that cause me concern or doubt are just confused 'teenagers' and need a little extra time. Were we really all that different at that age?

Cheers,

prd

Like folks sharing an elevator, I'm with you prd - on so many levels.
Any generation should be understood by the preceding one, and so on.

This takes nothing away (except blame) from Mowerfreaks CRU descriptor.
Young people take from older folk - and many, powerful, older folk are [Censored].
[Incidentally, who is camping-out for the iPhone 8?]

And vint-mow has 'come out' as being sympathetic to 'the box cause'.

prd, I am embarrassed.
I know that answer ... but I cheated
I am ashamed ... I have retreated to my box.

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Jack

Yeah, I cracked up laughing when I saw this pic, over on the ADVRider Forums 'LolCats meme' thread, 'Ninja Skillz';