i dont do the actual diving but many metal scrappers do and bring me the goodies in return for my scrap.
i will grab stuff from the curb though.many a lcd or plasma tv,pc,ect gets picked up.
funniest was the 50” plasma i picked up a few weeks back.this week i had put it on craigslist for sale.
all fixed up of course.
the folks that bought it brought their son along to help load it.he said hey thats the big ugly mf that picked up ours.
turns out it had been theirs and they set it out because the local tv shop in a garage guy said he could not fix it.
1 shorted diode and i recapped the power supply preemptivly.
they were actually happy to buy it back.
have now done 2 jobs for their family.
There was a ferrous metal removal rig, you would find all sorts of sockets, silverware, knife blades... Some how there was always a lot of nonfferous metals there too. Just kicking around in the piles that came out of the machine, sometimes you would turn up some precious metals
Every time my dad goes to the dump, he also checks for old mowers, snow blowers, weed whackers and the such. If I ever need any of that, give him a call and he will give me one. If it breaks down, give him a call and he will come take the broken one, and have a working one for me. Last time I looked, he had something like a dozen of them heavy duty gas powered weed wackers on his gorilla rack out in the barn
Not scored out of the dumpster, but it was headed there. I intercepted it in route.
A elderly co worker asked to borrow my truck, I don’t loan it out to many people because its a dually, and most can’t drive them or park them. Anyways, He had some house hold stuff to throw & haul off from his house I said all is good as long as I get it back at noon, I need it. Well, he made several trips, then came by my house in my truck, to ask for a hand unloading the last item around 11am.
Turns out, it was a 3 year old Stainless Steel Dishwasher. I asked him, is that my gift for loaning you my truck? He laughed and said I could have it and it works fine! It made some strange sound that only his wife could hear and it caused havoc with her hearing aid! He paid over $500 for it! I said, well I don’t need my truck back by noon then, I was going to buy a dishwasher, my 20 year old one had died the night before!!! Talk about crazy and funny. And I got free delivery! We unloaded it, took my old one out, and he and I went dumped the old one!
My cool dump story. That was a few years ago, it is still working great. Oh and best part, the wife is happy!!
When I was an impoverished student (20+ years ago!) I used to get a lot of my food from the supermarket bins. I’m not talking mouldy gone off stuff, just food that was slightly past its sell-by date.
After a few months of this, a 9’ fence was erected around the bin to stop the ‘divers’…it didn’t though because being skinny I could squeeze under the fence where it passed over some dirt…
There is something off about erecting a 9’ fence around food thats being tossed. I know, possible liability.
I have scored several things either out of dumpsters or the recycling areas as well as from the "Give away" part of newspaper adds.
The nicest thing was just recently. My wife picked up about 300USD worth of LEGO for the kids from a family that had already loaded it on the trailer ready to go to the dump. Electric train, castle, several sets like trains stations and stuff like that. My eyes were bulging from the score. The only work it needed to run was clean the contacts in the battery compartments for alkaleak sauce and it was good to go. My kids are spoiled with free toys like that. The missus and me have knack for finding it. And people think that once their kids are tired/grown/bored with it no one else wants it. We give a lot of the stuff away free to families around here who don´t have too much money neither. That way all the kids get "new" toys fairly regularly and no one is bored to the level where they start breaking it.
Loving these stories. With the amount of waste we produce, it’s hardly surprising people make such great scores all the time.
One other place to check out is the free section of Craigslist. Most times the free stuff is just mattresses and sofas that cost big money to have hauled away. I’m not talking about that kind of stuff.
One time I found a guy that was cleaning out his shed and had about $250 worth of lawn fertilizer. It was old and had absorbed some moisture through the bags. All I had to do was dump it all on the driveway on a hot sunny day and spread it around. After it dried out, I swept it up and put it a bunch of empty kitty litter buckets.
This was particularly satisfying because I am always loathe to spend good money on fertilizer, as all I am going to do with it is “throw it in the dirt” anyway.
Oh yeah I forgot. Both my kids sleep in either free or "token of appreciation" priced beds. One of the beds is a really pricey danish made wooden thing with some smart features and smarter advertising. Love free stuff. Oh. And the little girl rides in a free baby carriage (if thats the name for a four wheeled push along thing they can sleep in) that had 1 little bolt missing. The missus fixed that right up. :-) The couple who gave it away were grateful for getting rid of it too :-)
A few years back I was walking home from work at about 10pm, the next day was garbage collection day.
I noticed an unusually large pile in front of a house which had a pair of bookshelf sized speakers in it, luckily I only had a few hundred meters left to walk.
The speakers had some scratches (black sharpie takes care of scratches in dark wood surprisingly well) and some paint drips that scraped off but the cones were in perfect shape.
They turned out to be PSB alphas that would have cost me around $300 at the time.
Oh, speaking of curb finds. my and my buddy found a slate top pool table on the side of the road for the trash man. We put it on our skateboards and pushed it up a huge hill that was about 1/2 mile long. It had no legs or stickss, but had all the balls and we rigged up legs and used broom handles I think as sticks. We were like 13 at the time
Speaking of dumpster diving: 
I just walked by a dumpster here where they were cleaning out some office supplies. Mostly junk like old transparency holders and stuff like that. On top of the pile were ten rolls of Kodak Elite Chrome and Elite II color slide film! A bit of eBay searching reveals that this stuff can be sold for $10+/roll! Unfortunately, it was raining so the outer boxes have a bit of water damage but they are still sealed with the film inside the canister in the box...
This just might be going on eBay someday soon... 
I might be willing to sell them to someone here if they you PM me an offer I can't refuse... 
A fiend of mine scored a dozen HP-9100 calculators and various peripherals/manuals from a dumpster (BTW, dumped illegally… they were supposed to be properly recycled). These are wonderful highly collectible machines that can fetch upwards of $5000 each! I cleaned them up and got them into top notch running condition and kept 6 of them.