Often you throw something away that is of no value to you, but there could be a collector of it somewhere in the world.

Putting your ballpoint, lighter, shampoo bottle, cd-cover et cetera on eBay is too much hassle. The financial gain is not your motivation in this case, just to please some nerd or artist and to not throw something away is enough.

Searching the database of collectors will also be fun if it also hosts pictures and indexes of the collections.
-- rrr, Aug 27 2008

Freecycle http://www.freecycle.org/
Recycling for free [8th of 7, Aug 27 2008]

Isn't this "Freecycle" ?
-- 8th of 7, Aug 27 2008


Why limit yourself to collectors? People want free stuff for all kinds of reasons.

If you're within reach of a craigslist site, that's another moneyless way of finding local recipients for free stuff.

Collectors should put their collections online if they want to, and some of them may be interesting to look at, but the benefits of centralizing that seem minimal at best.
-- jutta, Aug 27 2008


When you give your stuff to a collector the chance that it will remain on the planet is higher, just because it is part of a collection. Then it gets value because of the rest of the collection, it can become part of our cultural heritage.

When you just give it away the thing is more likely to get used and then discarded anyway, probably in a less responsible manner than you would have done yourself. But indeed, when you just want to get rid of something to be used by someone else, some local craigslist or freecycle network is the way to go.
-- rrr, Sep 01 2008


//Collecting is a mental disease//

Pah! Tosh! I've been enthusiastically collecting blubber around my waist for years and it's an eminently practical occupation. Without it, the shirts that I bought at the weekend would be much too big for me to wear.
-- DrBob, Sep 01 2008



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