Why genealogy is important to me, plans for this year and more Live chat with Alex

from uh inside my office um as you can maybe hear from the sound of my voice I've been a little under the weather um this past week which um actually the whole family has been uh fun fact under the weather is a uh nautical expression for getting people out from the top decks down to below deck uh thus under the weather when they weren't feeling well um so there you go a little fun fact to start off with um Melissa is still not feeling great uh but the kids are uh coming back around and I've this first day in a week I've had some energy here so I thought why not connect with you guys it's a weekend and we haven't chatted in a while um so I thought I'd give you an update on what has been happening um I apologize if there's a couple uh coughs or sneezes or things along the way um so hello from California uh Silver Slipper says hello as well I'm just seeing where you guys are logging in from who's the farthest person away where where are we coming from today we got California so far Connecticut Randy our friend Randy who's on often nitrous Dave from down the street basically uh Carol and Pennsylvania Michigan North Dakota lots of people in Michigan Maine United Kingdom Denmark okay boy it's you know it's always a surprise of me to see people from all over the place uh Georgia Tennessee Calgary Netherlands South Africa wow Rome [Laughter] gez uh Delaware it I don't know why I don't ask where everybody's from more often this is fascinating Scotland I mean Moscow pei and we've almost hit every every continent out there so far that's that's pretty cool Knoxville Tennessee uh Nevada but only for a couple days one person says Kentucky uh more in California so um boy that is surprising me to see how many folks are on from all over the place here today um so no matter where you're from Welcome to the live chat today um it's funny um you know we're talking about places around the world and um I've been I've been down flat on my back basically the last week here with uh really bad flu and um in that downtime I had a day of basically lying there like a lump on the couch and you can only watch so many TV shows and stuff and have a clean Xbox by your side as your best friend and um and you start to uh need to have a little um uh time to focus on something so I was actually doing my genealogy and going through that and um I've traced my family back um it's funny to kind of go backwards and this is probably boring for you guys but for me it tells the story of the population of America it tells the story of um migration patterns and and uh not just the family my history but basically the family um you know many families had a similar story and so if I go back um from where I am in Alberta right now uh we would find ourselves in hecka South Dakota prior to that um it was um uh Detroit Michigan and prior to uh Michigan it was um uh onck North umberland and Newcastle that area and I discovered over this past little while to really dig into the family tree that um my third great-grandfather um he had a store go figure I guess being a retailer must be in my blood uh he was the uh town grer of the town of wooler um and uh I guess it's named woer because uh just for that they used to produce wool there and apparently there was this big rift between an Earl and Scotland and uh whose name oddly was archal uh not my last name but uh he would came and stole all the sheep and then they went back and stole them back again again and it caused a big battle more or less and um uh yeah so this is like way back but in the 1800s uh my family owned a uh what once was a large Church uh converted into I think it was their grocery store or uh they owned it at any point uh at any at any rate and it was the uh it was called Archbold Hall so if you look up Archbold Hall um you can see this Grand looking old church unfortunately it got knocked down um but if there's anybody on who's ever watching from the uh wer um Northumberland Alik sort of area um I am oh I am planning on making a trip there uh hopefully this year sometime that I'll be in the UK and go and uh Reep retrace the footsteps of my ancestors um what's interesting is there was a um uh an online chat group on Facebook and if you really dig into your family tree um so I found it okay they're from this wer area and I even found an advertisement for his business and it shows all the stuff he sold at his store and I'm like yeah that's a cool looking shop like they had tea and wallpaper they called them paper hangings but he sold wallpaper and tea and um chocolates and all kinds of stuff there and uh it's funny that I inadvertently carried on that uh tradition years later here um in in my own country you know and when I think of how I decorated my shop I'm sure it didn't look that much different with the jars full of goods and things like that like I had in my store um I guess maybe it's uh you know it's a family business so uh I I'm trying to retrace exactly where they lived I found the address where he lived from a sensus from in 1851 and uh I'm planning on going to uh visit and uh and and see where my family came from so I'm actually getting pretty excited about that so I don't know if maybe you guys can share in the comments if you've done genealogy and found anything really interesting in your past or in your history too um for me um when I I wrote this um woer North umberland sort of site on Facebook and I I asked does anybody know anything about this and uh this lady actually had letters uh in her cuz she collected old letters you know how I found those photos in the last live feed I did and I the guy wrote me and he said that my great great grandfather you have pictures of and I sent them to him well in this case um I was on the Facebook page and the lady said I actually have some letters in some of your fames mentioned and it specifically talks about the reasons why um the shop closed uh in wer so he was a grocer in wooler um this is probably not very interesting for you but it paints a picture of what happened and what caused people to sort of uh immigrate and um the town of wer was quite small and uh never really had a chance to grow um I guess they had trouble with you know uh whether it was Scottish people coming and stealing their sheep or whatever it was it never really I don't know didn't they had issues and so the town never grew to be much bigger than what it was even though it had promise and uh it started to shrink in the 1800s and so around 1850 or so my um third great-grandfather um I guess passed the store along his business along to family that was there and he came to uh America on a Brig which is a two-masted square rig sailing ship uh in 1853 and he was 40 40 years old at the time so not a young man uh I mean by today's standards that's not that old but in those days you'd only live to 60 or 65 if you were lucky so um uh for him that was you know a big move he he'd been a grocer for like 20 years there and decided to up and move and and now I know why my family came to America that the town was dwindling um the churches were sort of um amalgamating and uh that's probably how they ended up owning an old church because it got abandoned or disused and they they were an entrepreneur and and bought it um um uh but you know it's interesting to learn those bits and pieces about your family history um and yeah it's just it's kind of cool um and so I'm kind of reading the comments here somebody asked what watch are you wearing today I know I'm a watch guy I look I'm not even wearing a watch today um I've had no concept or need of time this past week so there you go um Navajo Dave says I'm Navajo I could have guess that from your name German and Irish the Navajo uh migrated from Canada to the state some Navajo state in Canada and there's still around a thousand Navajo in Canada mostly Calgary and Alta that's cool um uh when I went through my family tree I I I didn't have any uh indigenous or North American Indian ancestry um although I do have um some third or fourth cousins who are a jibway but I'm not a jibway they are part Russian I think on my mom's side so uh they've invited me out there to actually learn more about the culture and uh they're very lovely people and um yeah I guess once once your cousin they just kind of you're in the group so I got the invite to go out so at some point I'd like to go out and do that actually the one cousin I connected with she's a um a musician a singer and a and a guitar player go figure um uh oh uh net net fiend says hey Alex can you let us know where you bought the bulk of Roman coins um yeah sure I can it was just on eBay um if you look up uncleaned Roman cord lot uh Roman horde lot of coins um often s they'll come up and yeah they just sent me basically as you saw in the video a sack of very filthy dirty Roman coins um so uh I went through actually I went through and I cleaned them uh which normally you don't clean coins uh that's not one that you normally do but in in that case you guys saw those coins were really really nasty um and so cleaning them actually didn't do any harm it actually revealed what was underneath which is what I wanted to do but there's one there you can actually see what the heck is on it I have that upside down anyway um so I kept back some for myself and uh the rest are going to auction and uh yeah they're worth like um some of them some of them that I found I've actually found sales records the one and thank you uh there's some Macedonian coins in here um some of them have uh they are all around you know from the year 300 to 500 um CE common a um so there's actually some pretty decent coins that were in there so considering I paid like a buck each there's some in there that ended up being um there was auction results in the same condition that mine ended up being in they were worth you know $1 or $200 each so really really cool um Jim says I wonder if there's still legal tender um only in saskat and Jim where Jim is where they still have folks living in some of those towns that are old enough to remember the the Roman rule uh I don't think they're they're you know I it's funny though I wonder I it does make me wonder though how um how these coins how long you know when you think that some of these coins span a few hundred years how long were they keeping coins in circulation at that time because if you have a pot full of coins and they range over the last 300 years they must have still had value um and for them like some of those Emperors only lasted four or five years and you get a different one so um I wonder if there was coin collectors in ancient days you know like people who were like oh I'm trying find a juliia Caesar I'm trying to find a you know a A tiberious or like I wonder if there was coin collect has any I don't know it is a thought though you know you wonder if there were people who had like little collections they looking at the bus and heads and trying to collect certain ones from different countries and stuff or if they just looked at it like a little chunk of bronze um but uh yeah I guess we'll see um how long does okay how long does storage companies keep records of the users um Heidi is your question about um storage companies like storage lockers uh just if you can Define that question for me a little bit I'll try and uh I'll try and answer that for you um Dave says where any of the coin silver no one thing that the coin dealers when they send you a lump of unclean coins I think they do check and see if any of them were silver um and they don't send you the really good ones they just send you the ones that they can't be bothered to clean which is fine for me cuz as you saw um with some elbow grease some effort I was actually able to clean them up now a lot of people aren't willing to do that and a lot of people wouldn't recommend doing what I did but they did absolutely no harm to the coins whatsoever um it just took that silt and sediment off and I thought it was actually pretty fascinating to see the history revealed underneath there um in the US coin collecting started in the 1850s there's got to have been collectors I would think in ancient times you know and rock collect I imagine the first thing people collected were probably rocks you know like oo shiny pointy uh useful um I think rocks were the first thing and people still don't you ever most of us instinctively when you walk along like the water or Beach and you see a cool rock you just that's the first thing most of us collect is a rock I think um and uh truth be told it's even hard now not to go to a a beach or a rocky Shore and see a cool rock and not pick it up and want to bring it back home with you so um probably rocks I'm guessing were the first thing people collect it but um yeah so Prince George um um let's see uh lean what items do you love more to collect um so are you talking about well I have a toy collection behind me here I have my my office separated into two little areas the fun kind of toy stuff behind me and then I've got more like the historical stuff opposite of me which you've probably seen in some other videos and at some point I'll do a walk through of why I've kept what I've kept on that side um when I find something really special I hang on to it over there these are things I've accumulated behind me uh such as the old windup toys the shucos and then we've got the Corgi Toys like the Batmobiles and stuff like that that um that uh I've been hanging on to and and collecting but really um the bulk of my collection is is what's in this office just you know I've got five shelves with stuff on it um I don't have a giant huge Warehouse full of things um it's got to be something pretty special and if I find something more unique I'll often times find something that I need to get rid of off my shelf and repace place it so I'm constantly changing stuff around in here as I'm doing right now with my actual car collection uh if you guys um might have noticed I am getting ready to sell my Jag XK um which if you look way up oh you can't see up there anyway up at the top I have a giant Jag XK model that I built uh when I got the car years ago now and um we are um going to be downsizing ing the car collection the actual car collection here um to I guess free up a little bit of money so I can do a bit of travel like go to England and and uh we're going to take the family on a trip here pretty soon and stuff so there's other priorities that are coming up you don't need to have a bunch of extra car sitting around so some can go um I've been asked a few times here oh gosh um somebody asked me a question many many times and I saw and now I forgot what your question was and I was just about to answer it uh oh somebody said when you go to uh ukuk you should go to cwal motor museum yeah I would love to hit some motor museums when I'm out that way um oh uh gosh I'm so sorry if I missed your question I'll try and get back to it oh Darla says I found an old Rolex in my Father Strong box he was a World War II Ranger don't know if most Rangers received a Rolex um here's the interesting thing about um Rolexes uh and mil and their military connection so they weren't necessarily issued a Rolex watch but you could buy a Rolex through what we call on our our milit military base is the canx which is basically the the military store so uh a lot of bases have a little store there you can order stuff in and some guys would order in um a basic uh Rolex watch and during World War II the the watches that they sold you for Rolex were what they call a boy size they were a Smalls siiz watch and um they weren't always labeled as Rolex they would have the Rolex logo on the uh on the winder um on the crown I should say but um sometimes they would say other names on them um you know like oyster or lipin or things like that and so you have to really research them at least in our area anyway um but you wouldn't often be issued a Rolex but you could pay extra at the at the military store and buy yourself a Rolex and have it come in and you could go as high as you want or whatever and uh some guys would spend a whole pile of money on a good watch because um they were good they were waterproof they were durable and so if you're um worried about uh having a Time piece that would let water and a lot of military guys like them because they were very waterproof watertight dust resistant it's actually a pretty decent watch to have if you're going to be in the element so that might explain why your dad ended up with a Rolex like that there was a great story on Antiques Road show about a guy who uh served in Vietnam and uh he was told by his friends in the military um I can't remember what what his uh where he served in in what rank or division but but um he was told the same thing you should go get yourself a Rolex it's a great watch and so uh he did and he bought himself uh a Rolex GMT and he took it into Antiques Road Show he actually never wore it he bought it he kept it brand new in the box for all those years and it was he purchased it and I think um early part of the Vietnam war in the 60s and uh this fellow ended up uh I don't I don't think he I think he might have been on a bit of a fixed income found out he had a watch that was worth um I think they said something like a what do you remember was it like $100,000 or something it was crazy it was a lot of money and um yeah it was it was just like a pile of cash he actually fell over like fullon grown man fell over nearly fainted and it was it was crazy um I just see there that um yeah a fellow um uh was given a watch from IBM as an anniversary yes Rolexes were gifted as uh anniversary gifts sometimes 25 years there was a department story here called eatens if you're in Canada you probably remember the eatens chain it was a big chain like a like a Macy's or I don't know herods or something like that my Melissa is a sweetheart she's actually brought me water CU she can hear me struggling right now with my voice thank you sweetie um there was a a chain called uh eatens here and when you hit the 25 year mark uh you had your selection of not just a Rolex you had your selection of a solid gold role Rolex could you imagine working at an apartment store now making minimum wage and when you hit 25 years they give you a solid gold Rolex uh I'm sure you'd feel like that was a nice reward you'd be proud to wear it I feel like um they they don't maybe a lot of companies don't do those sort of spiffs in the same way that they used to do then and uh those watches were very special and um they would say quarter instead of saying Rolex they didn't say Rolex on the dial they were solid gold and they said and it was spelled out one quarter and then Century Club around the dial instead of the the Arabic numerals and that was your 25 year and you could get a a lady's watch you could get a a pocket watch or you could get the wrist watch um or they had a beautiful Art Deco sort of tank Style watch and and that's the most valuable of the of the four that they made but anyway really really cool sorry about my voice guys I'm going to read questions while I take a sip here B bottlan Bob says he has a Casio if the watch tells you the time that's all you need it to do um oh that's the question uh lioness says do you know anything about cashing and old stocks and bonds I wish I knew more okay yes I do know a little bit about um cashing in Old stocks and bond bonds oh uh I will get into that in a second uh what name did the Rolex for eatens have on it it said quarter Century Club on the dial it did not say Rolex on the dial it said it didn't have a name it where the numbers are it's spelled out quarter Century Club that's how you tell that's a department store 25th anniversary or 25th celebratory gift of a solid gold Rolex it is an actual Rolex fun fact I guess and actually my one of my good friends here he sent me a picture and he said um my wife inherited this watch it's it's uh the crystal is broken is it worth anything it was one of those and I said yeah that's a solid gold Rolex and he was like wao he had no idea so sometimes having this weird knowledge Bank can actually help your friends and family and maybe some of you at home watching so if you ever are out at a flea market or an antique show and you see a watch that says quarter Century Club that's actually Rolex um Rolex didn't always put their name on the dials like I said the way to tell a Rolex is that it has a screw uh back um case back and it has a wind uh a screw down crown and the screw down Crown sometimes gets worn off for a place but often times you'll see the little Crown the Rolex logo on it that's how you know it's a Rolex even if it doesn't say Rolex on the dial HH um stocks and bonds uh I'm going to I'll answer that question so sometimes and this happened to me uh when I went through Betty Jones house we found a whole bunch of uncashed unused stocks and bonds now there's no family left and um the the bare Bond notes and and I have some that are for hundreds of shares of oil and gas companies and stuff that may have been Amalgamated um to to cash in first first thing and I haven't been able to figure out how to do it yet um you can um oh uh what are they called now it's like a bond sales person it's like a person at a bank um you you can do one or two things if you have paper stocks you come across one is you have to look and see what happened to that company if it's still a registered company um it's uh easier because you if it was like McDonald's Corporation or Starbucks or something like like that then then yeah you you that company's still there they can figure out what those original shares were worth before they did stock splits so over the years like apple has split their shares so many times that uh one original share of Apple is probably equal to like thousands of shares of Apple now because the stock has split and split and split so many times basically as the value goes up they split it to bring the value down as time goes by um so if you're like ah it's just one share of let's say um you know apple or something it's not going to be worth anything well you might be WR quite wrong about that um so always check your stock certificates if it's a if it's a still a registered company you can reach out to um they have like a bare bonds Department generally at the company themselves and uh and they deal with shareholders and you can write them and ask them about the process um that's the easiest way to do it if the company still exists you just email the company and that division that deals with shareholders and you and they will help guide you through that process um a lot of times companies get bought out of years and that's uh what happens with a lot of oil companies and you see mining companies and things where you know somebody gets uh starts a mining company and they sell shares but they don't really find anything and so they they sell what Stakes they had in it to somebody else who gets the claim uh and so it's really tricky sometimes to track down the the lineage of what happened to that company but if you're sleuthy enough um you can do it uh and then you have to find out what the current company is and kind of figure out what happened to those shares and what they're worth now um who knows maybe I'm sitting on something that's worth some money I have no idea but uh if anybody has any um Insight more than what I have please let me know send me an email in fact or or leave it in the comments here because I've only done just a marginal amount of research um and yeah Randy says stockholder relations usually is what it's called when when it's a company that that usually like you just look on their contact us and it and it's there so uh gosh yeah it is frustrating um um uh sometimes the actual paper stock certificate is worth more than the stock itself yeah there are people who collect like if you have um extinct Motor Company let's say like stud Baker Motor shares where it doesn't exist anymore sometimes people just collect those shares because it looks cool the artwork's really cool on it um oh my gosh I'm so glad Melissa brought me water uh do I come across hockey cards uh or do you find any old ones from like the 30s I the only time I came across a whole bunch of old cards uh was when I bought that if you look back at my earlier videos You'll see a video um where we bought a whole General Store and gosh I wish I would have had the knowledge I had now in terms of YouTube that is because I went there and just bought a bunch of stuff and I was overwhelmed and I only did like two little videos on what could have been a major series of unloading this abandoned antique store full of cool stuff still a neat series either way um but I did find tobacco cards in that building and I never hockey ones though but I am buying incidentally uh Rob says I might need something stronger than water like some whiskey or something like that um some tea perhaps um I am still looking for collections of things um so like last week I had a person reach out this is an unopened box which I'll do a an opening video of this is all watches in here somebody wrote me and said they had a bunch of broken watches for parts um and I bought the whole box off of them and they shipped it to me me uh which I'll do an unopening uh an unboxing video on that we'll go through and see what exactly that was um that now that I'm feeling better um I'll do that and uh and we'll go through it but um yeah um we are still looking for stuff and mainly um looking for you know like old watches obviously I'm interested in that old toys like what's behind me um just interesting odd things you know I was super happy like old scrapbooks um with old pH photographs and uh I'm interested in doing research and finding small bits of information trying to piece them together so um yeah just interested in having fun I this this year in general I think I just want to go explore and have fun you know put the Curiosity into the Curiosity ink um nitrous diecast is is saying hey Raymond you should do a video on your old Hot Wheels uh Dave is super big into Hot Wheels who who is a customer at our store and watches his channel and so I see his comments on here regularly but uh yeah I do buy Hot Wheel Collections and and things like that too so um oh I didn't even read the comments on the coins uh so he said the comments on the coins were harsh it doesn't matter if if people were upset because I I cleaned 2,000 years worth of dirt off a coin to actually see what it looked like it looked like a lump of dirt otherwise so what you know it's not like they they were kind of worthless before I did that and the history was obscured or covered so there there's going to be all kinds of people who criticize everything a person does in this world I don't regret it I could actually make out who the Emperors were and and uh it was fun it was really neat to see history come back to life like that um so yeah I mean it I wouldn't do it to one that was already in good shape obviously um nor would I take like a nice toned silver coin and give it a good polish because I know you know people don't really like it when you do that I'll have to be honest guys the the older I get um and I know this seems okay this is going to seem like a hypocritical statement but I I have little things that make me happy but I'm not so attached that I wouldn't get rid of them because uh an ancient Roman coin at the end of the day um if it's obscured and covered it's a lump of metal it's just a lump of metal but once you can uncover the history you start to think about the people attached to it you know who during the Byzantine era um had this coin who who was um you know this ruler that had themsel put on and oh they were an emperor where they they were a leader a military commander that that had some Sway and so for me you can't see any of that history until you you get into it and all this stuff is just stuff you're the you're the keeper the caretaker of it but I feel that history is really important to understand all the hard work the footsteps the the the the shoulders that people had to stand on to to bring you to life into this world and I think it's disrespect respectful to our ancestors to not appreciate I think all the things they went through um and I started off this conversation talking about geneology that for me it's out of respect to my ancestors uh and respect to the people before me uh to understand and and I guess to nod my to tip my hat to them for you know uh to the ones that died at Sea um that left behind a child to the ones that made the arduous journey across the ocean you know you're talking 10 weeks in a in a Brig a two a two masted square riged ship not a very big one across rough Seas um bringing six young children with you at the age of 40 as my third great-grandfather did in 1850 to come to America um and start a new life here only to die two years later of of who knows what um and I just um I don't know I think our Generations now need to have a bit more respect to what people went through through and that doesn't mean to stop in your tracks and not push yourself forward and do other things but when you look back and see all the things that the people before you did to bring you here um it makes you feel more connected I think um and and and that's why these objects always the toys are just fun I think they're kind of neat um but when it comes to historical stuff um it makes me feel more connected to the past of my ancestry as well as other people's ancestries um and uh and so yeah although they're just objects and we're just caretakers of them um for me there's a deep um uh a deep meaning that goes into in into these things and I know you see me just rumaging through a box and and uh looking for stuff and and it's not just to find you know we do buy and sell things of you know to make money and I don't think that you know buying a box of Cabbage Patch dolls and selling them is not going to be you know the end of the world but um when we find his historical family photos we we give them back to the family um and you know documents and things of that nature I always whether it's a storage unit or whether it's a hoarded house that we're clearing out or anything like that these people have walked away from it because it's a terrible mess and they don't want to deal with it but I always put stipulate in the contracts we do with them um that we are going to if we come across family photos or family heirlooms we give that back to the family and if you wonder how how do I end up with other people's Family Photos unfortunately sometimes s you get in a situation where those photos like the ones I found in the last video had gone through a different branch of the family and it got to the end of the line where there were no children there were no immediate cousins or people nearby that they talked to or maybe they were um you know uh not in contact with the far distant cousins that were distant relations and so they were going to go in the trash and so for me to be able to save those pictures and either uh if we can find the family as we did the last go around and give them to them or if we can um sell them to people who do um genealogy or do cherish these things and keep them and not throw them out then at least you're saving something um and sometimes these records are important uh because it gives you um uh a perspective of a certain place in time of how someone dressed um of of how people carried themselves in photographs and and uh for the history of our species it's important to keep that stuff around so you can look back and see where we went and where we came and um and document it so um that's the part of my job that I love um and for those of you that know my channel and know me well enough you know that I I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a little kid mainly cuz I wanted to be like Indiana Jones and go dig around for treasures and stuff like that maybe have a whip now i' now I've got whips in the sense of cool cars uh which colloquial are called whips um but I don't uh crack a whip so to speak but uh I always love the idea of this lost history cover in spider web that somebody forgot about and trying to get them somewhere more interesting uh not necessarily I wanted to keep it but you know just to discover it and so when I'm out in somebody's house um that's been left behind or forgotten to to find things were really cool um I'm going to take a sip of water here and I'm going to read some of your comments um gosh yeah I love people are watching other other folks videos and people are dumpster diving finding Hot Wheels and thinking of me that's great if I was dumpster diving and found a Hot Wheel I'd think of me too the thing used to drive me crazy and this is this is about things in dumpsters is that for um for a year I worked uh at Target now that uh may or may not surprise you um but I was a general manager I used to be a store manager of department stores and so when I had a real job um I'm capable of managing hundreds of people um I used to have um I was a district manager for a while and then ran I think at one point I had um up to 22 stores that I looked after so I was actually a professional retailer prior to prior to being some guy you watch open boxes on YouTube uh and so so you know that if YouTube slows down for me I will probably reapply and go and do something like that again um however when I was a Target the thing that drove me crazy during my onboarding and this is when I was working in Oregon is that they would have these really you know when you go in a department store and they have those really cool store displays like a big Lego set of like the Millennium Falcon with all the figures and it's in a plastic case and that's the one supposed to entice you to buy the others they throw that stuff out it drove me nuts because I was like that's a perfectly good thing but they uh a lot of times perfectly good things currently and actively and still get thrown out at big department stores the waste the amount of waste at those store now I'm not saying this to noct just Target I'm just saying this um in general about many stores is that there is a tremendous amount of food waste every single day um where you are filling entire dumpsters full of really perfectly good food um and also cool stuff like the the toys and you know clothing and things that they they don't want to be bothered with trying to sell something that's less than perfect or maybe they have a contract with the vendor that says item must be destroy destroyed after display and so uh you would be shocked I I I had a a single H there I am you know be a manager of a store and the single tear down my cheek is because I'm seeing all dumpsters full of wagons full of food being thrown out every day and uh and all these cool you know uh displays and stuff just chucked the people like you know even if they saved it and sold it and and gave the money to charity it could be good for something I guarantee there's Lego collectors that would paid huge money for those Lego displays after they were done with them and that money could have gone to charity and maybe fed some families or something but it's that that kind of waste drove me absolutely crazy but I guarantee that's still happening today um and yeah and Matthew Fox is saying well now I want to dig in dumpsters these were compactor dumpsters Matthew unfortunately so not only it wouldn't just get thrown gently in a dumpster out back um they would throw them into a compactor inside the building and then crush it all so I don't think there was much hope of anything being saved um at the end of that I mean maybe but uh it got compacted so there's no every every large sort of department store that you shop at is throwing out giant those huge truckload of dumpsters uh worth of good stuff every single night without batting an eye I'm sure the people there are probably thinking it's nuts too but it's their policies um hopefully they can change their policy and and try and find a better way to deal with things even if they composted all the food or did something with it or you think there's got to be pig farms that you could feed uh livestock you know pigs Le just about anything um there's got to be better ways of dealing with it anyhow I digress um this was somebody got me on the conversation about stuff being thrown out in dumpsters and uh that just triggered a very uh uh very solid memory in my head of going no standing there I was getting trained and I was just caught up on like yeah and so this is where the dumpster room is I'm like whoa whoa whoa no why are they throw this stuff out for this is crazy I couldn't like the entrepreneur in me the The Goonies the Indiana Jones floating under my head when you see all this good stuff getting thrown out it just drove me nuts Indiana Jones could Dodge a big could Dodge a dumpster I think that's more Star Wars I'm surprised you didn't go to the compactor scene on on Star Wars there Matthew um so hopefully as as things um evolve these companies these large corporations will change a bit of their practices and um and maybe find better ways to deal with it um but yeah anyway that that's coming directly from a guy who used to be a was called the store team leader so I was in charge of one of the stores so yeah who'd think I used I I have no employees right now I went to University for human resource uh management and no employees just me in this cup of water and you guys in YouTube and now what do I do I go around and I open boxes of stuff um but I am having fun with my freedom and I figured I'm still young enough yet that if I decide the YouTube thing doesn't pan out um that I will uh go back and get a regular job again but I'm having fun with this right now um truth be told so I I kind of I went off topic for a little bit here and I I started off we're talking about um genealogy and ancestry and how I've been sick which is why I've got this going on um um and incidentally some of you said um Alex it looks like you've lost weight uh yeah I've lost um what 30 lbs uh in the last four months but that's not because I was sick this past week that's because I made a conscious effort of just eating better um but I'm pretty much down to nearly my high school weight again which is awesome uh I've been trying to get here for I don't know 15 years so finally there um but I am feeling more even though I'm sick today I'm feeling like I've got more energy my back isn't hurting as much um so feeling really good um so yeah basically just trying to keep healthy and um uh 2024 it's not like it was a New Year's resolution thing it was just basically um um basically a mind over matter sort of thing yeah so um 30 pounds in the last four months if you go back and look back at live streams you're like Alex looks different somehow well I feel um I feel like I look more like myself again you know so you look in the mirror and you're like who's this person looking back at you so I recognize myself again I have a jawline again look at that you know that's the thing that Bugg me the most anyway um Randy says was it a specific diet plan actually no it was not um Randy I'll be honest with you see I'm drinking water right now drinking okay you I know that none of you I'm answering this for Randy I'm not here to lecture anybody on your eating I have no idea what you look like because all I see is your name coming up so this is not to be judgmental whatsoever this is about my journey and and what this was the first thing I did is I stopped drinking any kind of sugary drink and I pretty much only drink uh I know the juice has sugar in it but vitamin C is not bad for you so if I feel like something sweet I might have an orange juice but otherwise I just pretty well drink water or tea um and so uh changing what you drink is a big part of it because a a lot of the sugar that you take in in a day comes in um soda and uh sugary pops and stuff like that um I also cut way back uh I'm not doing keto I did that before and that did help but um I I'm not doing keto but I don't really I don't eat a lot of bread um so occasionally I'll have like some toast or something but I don't really crave bread um so it's more of proteins like chickens and meats and things like that and vegetables and really I kind of eat what ever I want but I don't feel like eating a lot of sugars and stuff when you cut a lot of sugar out of your diet you don't crave it as much um and so yeah just been doing that for like 4 five months and um I felt like I was going to die for the first week cuz um I felt like I was starving myself and it was like I felt nauseous and stomach sick and I had to kind of get past that feeling um and then once once I got past it actually it wasn't so bad and and now um you find that your Cravings are less um you know I definitely had a sweet tooth before where I could have eaten a big meal um and finish it with like a big piece of chocolate cake or something like that um now occasionally I'll have an ice cream and that's about the only thing that I'll probably crave is occasionally an ice cream um but I don't know Randy basically just cutting out a lot of the sugary drinks if you can water is the best thing for you I mean that's probably why our bodies are what what are we 70% water or the Earth is over 70% water there's a lot of water going on we are we are people of the earth and of these elements and so the natural stuff is is good for um yeah so anyway that that's that's that I guess um Randy says sweets are my downfall um you know uh there are things that you can eat to kind of um like figs and stuff like that that are sweet but have you know less um harsh like refined sugars and stuff in it anyway um I'm not I'm not here to be a life coach for anybody by any means um in terms of your health like I said Randy answered he's a regular subscriber so I thought I'd give him an honest answer what the heck I did to lose uh 30 lbs in four months um but gosh I'm I'm coming over a flu but I'm feeling healthier and my chronic back pains have all almost disappeared um and the reason for that is that you've got less literally less weight that you're putting on on your spine so um there you go um hello from New Jersey um uh fig somebody said there must be something other than figs yeah there's lots of other stuff other than figs that's what came to mind because that's what we have kicking around when if I felt like something sweet I might have a fig um uh but you know like once once once or twice a month to have like an ice cream or something gets get gets out of your system anyway what it uh so he says my body is a refined sugar factory but I actually have um we um um I have family uh that historically struggled with with weight um and so that is something that I have to be mindful of because it would be easy for me to to fall into uh unhealthy eating habits which I have in the past um and so trying to get myself back into a a better swing of things so hopefully I can just kind of um keep this up and keep this going but uh feeling good anyhow um so let's see do oh William says do you miss the store you put so much time into it to answer your question William yes and no yes I miss building the store uh stocking the shelves um talking to customers finding new and interesting products to bring in I miss all that and being part of the community in that sense uh yes I do miss that part of having a store having a business I don't miss the crazy property tax I don't miss um being burdened by the weight of all that product um that really was one of those things where you you look around uh during the day and you go oh my gosh like I have to get rid of all this stuff you know every day I was just like beside myself so I like being a retailer um but I didn't necessarily like having um an antique store um Navajo Dave said the store looked amazing thank you um I love visual merchandising um if I was well trained in that when I did retail um I got offered a job as a um area visual merchandiser for the bay the Hudson Bay Company here which I I didn't take that job but um I really have a knack for it I guess well you wouldn't know for my office being cluttered but anyway really really enjoy that um and so yeah the the visual merchandising part of the shop I guess I'll put it this way creating an experience really appeals to me um and as I learned that my ancestors also had stores kind of cool that my third great-grandfather was a retailer as well and had was a grocer and sold all sorts of things and I imagine his shop looked pretty cool you know 1851 retailer would have been all shelves and jars full of cool knickknacks and stuff the local grocer was almost like the the local doctor and medican stuff too where they would have all sorts of um things to help people and so um yeah I a part of me thinks I would like to have another shop at some point but um I'd have to really think hard about what that would be I think it would be more of a general store and not Peg myself into the the the whole of being an antique shop you know I think I would decorate with some antique things that would be for sale but I don't think um specifically having an antique shop here's what I found if any of you ever wondered what it's like having an antique store you start off your business and you can't just instantly go out and have an antique store you have to build up inventory so prior to building up the shop we had to go around and buy a whole bunch of things and it wasn't even enough to fill the store so I offset it by having a bunch of old motorcycles cuz you could buy some that would fill the shop up really stressful starting the store because you start with nothing and then eventually people come in and they bring you stuff and they bring you stuff and the the more that you have a shop um you have to be very careful not to um go down the road of bringing a lot of junk in because pretty soon your shop starts to look like it's a thrift store and there's a lot of things that um wouldn't sell you know you'd bring somebody would say well I want to sell you this box full of stuff and 90% of it was junk you'd have to take it anyway because you wanted that one thing you get the one thing off in the shelf it and you're left with all these little knickknacks like old toasters that nobody buys and stuff like that and um I would say that probably 80% of the stuff that I had in my store from the antique side of things was stuff I could have cared less about you know um Nick Knacks and things that were of no interest to me but things that I carried to stock to the shelves and what was really of interest to me were the historical items um were the cool the fun stuff you know and that stuff was harder and harder to come by cuz um people would tend to sell that stuff kind of on Marketplace uh online and things and they would bypass the the retail setting and so um I would find this stuff by having to buy entire collections of things um and so for me a really well curated store um would be interesting um but um and I've said this before many times that near the end of our shop and actually technically my store still exists I am still a business I just don't have a store fund right now but the end of my storefront um days um we were gearing more towards bringing in unique General Store type products um it it made me more excited to support local people that were making especially Blended teas and coffees and Honeys and um procuring those sort of things brought me more joy because it wasn't just me buying some junk out of somebody's basement I was now supporting Henry the hot sauce seller or I was supporting uh Richard who had the honey farm and to to know these people personally and to be able to help their business actually meant something to me um the problem was I was listed as an antique store and so when you come into an antique store and it's now suddenly become a general store that has a few antique items well now the antique stuff doesn't really sell and all of my other stuff was and so my sales primarily started uh only coming from antique auction sales that's how I sold a lot of my antiques was if I took it to auction and sold it and we did sell antiques through the shop but antique auction sales but the General Store stuff was selling really really well and um when when Co hit and we had to shut down the shop for like over a year um we had to move to basically online sales and that was the Catalyst I guess to me thinking okay if I'm doing these videos of me looking for antiques and stuff I'm going to have to mainly sell the stuff through auction in which case I don't really need a store and so um made that decision um that and for a few other reasons to um to to trim the overhead and kind of do it that way so if I were to do a business again incidentally I know I'm rambling maybe this is boring to you guys there's like a thousand people on right now to some guy who's just talking but I'm I'm walking you through the retail aspect of it is that um there came a point where um I had to decide whether this was going to be an antique store that potentially disappointed people when they came in because it was not really an antique store it was a gift shop that had a Few Antiques um and um and Rebrand myself later uh or um you know just take a step back from it all and uh we've been broken into a few times too and I wanted to reassess um that neighborhood after we put the bars on the window thank to Jim by the way who's on right now our blacksmith friend who made those by hand um um I wanted to reassess the neighborhood because it wasn't I didn't feel as though the city was doing a a really great job uh policing or taking care of uh that area which was actually a good area um the West Mount Community EV bedon where my store was is considered a nice end of town the problem is it's Central and so people from other areans of town um who were on down on their luck um would take it upon themselves to break into businesses in that area into houses and uh it was it it was and still is a major problem in fact since I shut my store down I think it's gotten even worse in that area um so I think if I did it again I'd do it um maybe like in a a smaller town on the outskirts of the city and maybe make a destination um I've thought about it and I'm thinking about it I've not given up on it but that's something that takes um time and um I've sort of stepped away from it for a bit and I will be very thoughtful when I whenever I take next steps towards whatever the next thing is going to be um but for now I'm still doing the buy and selling and I'm still doing the auctions and that and I have no overhead really other than you know the fuel for the truck and things like that so um it had to be sometimes you have to make very hard business decisions to make make your business um still successful and uh the point of fact being I'm still in business and I'm still doing stuff and we're still out there buying things uh and producing these videos for you and having fun um and also now that I don't have the store that might free me up for the potential to do a television series which may or may not happen come this spring or summer which I'm waiting to find out about so um there we go um yeah Weston M does have an antique shop in it that's that's beex actually that's where I did that trade with all the pocket watches for the Rolex um not that long ago um but yeah the the um I'm kind of glad that I did change things up at the time that I did because a couple things happened since I closed my store one um the economy is not very strong right now some of you might have noticed that um interest rates are incredibly High um people aren't spending money on a lot of things they don't really need right now and so to have a store dedicated to frivolous things um which people consider antiques um might have been might have made things a bit more challenging and talking to friends who have antique shops um are saying that the spending habits have cut way down in the last 5 to 10 years in fact um it it would have been a much bigger struggle I think had I had I stayed so ended up being a good decision in the end and it's given me some freedom to kind of decide what I want to do and also the freedom to travel and go explore and do stuff and possibly go to England to visit my ancestral home uh to see where and the great thing about England is that if I go to enck which is where I think I'm saying that right Al in in the North umberland Area there um the house that my ancestors lived in is probably still lived in by somebody cuz they don't tear anything down there um so I've been looking that up and it looks like the building is still there so I can actually go and say like yeah that's where that's where they they're from and walk the same streets and go to the same Pub uh onck alwick yeah it's it's it's spelled alwick but I don't know if you say the W like for all the English people invented the English language but like what's the deal with the word Colonel um you know or Worcester uh werer like I know you guys invented the language English people but all honesty and onic see alwick is pronounced onic there you go another one it's it's like I'll never figure out why why put the L or the W in there if you're not going to say it this it's confusing can you met poor people that come from other countries and have to learn the English language it's hard enough for people who speak this language um yeah so uh it's it's just funny to me but I am going to go there to to onic I guess is how it's pronounced where my family used to live and uh we're there since the 1300s so I'll be able to go visit a lot of uh dead relatives out there hopefully I'll find some live ones too um maybe you know an Archbold that lives in that area probably some relative of mine but guys as for me it's been about an hour long I hope you enjoyed today's rambling chat um I enjoyed chatting with you I am going to uh drink the rest of my water I'm going to rest up and uh get back to making video is here Dave says there's a castle there yeah apparently I had a fourth or fifth great-grandfather that worked in the castle um as a joiner which basically fix stuff wooden things around the castle so it'd be kind of cool to go see that so uh I'm off thank you guys for um visiting today and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend for the rest of it too we'll see you guys all soon and as always bye for now oh and don't forget if you got something cool you want to sell me yeah I I buy stuff look I haven't even opened this yet I bought this off of one of you at home it's a box full of old project watches that I bought because I said something like this on a live stream and then they wrote me so if you want to sell stuff it can actually happen um guys we'll talk to you soon have a wonderful day bye for now

Channel: Curiosity Incorporated

Views: 21,060

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Id: FW82C7w3uMA

Length: 55min 39sec (3339 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024