Junk hunks find treasure among heaps of clutter

By Kate Santich

The Orlando Sentinel

(MCT)

As a professional junk hauler, it's his job to sort through the junk and weed out the hazardous waste from the recyclable from the reusable.

"You know what they say," he said. "One man's junk is another man's treasure."

But once in a rare while, one man's junk is an opportunity to do something good for charity.

Some of the signatures were hard to read. But most came in plastic cases with plaques, and Ansari — a sports fan — recognized all the names.

"That's when I really got excited," said Ansari, whose first love is baseball.

But he also wondered whether the stuff was real. After all, these days fake sports memorabilia is about as rare as reality-TV "stars."

In all, there were 35 salvageable items.

"Some of the stuff was ruined," Storto said. The storage unit had no air-conditioning, so moisture and mildew had left stains.

The question then became what to do with the find.

"The more I think about it," Ansari said, "the more I'd like to see it go to some underprivileged kid that likes baseball or basketball or hockey but would otherwise never have something like this, you know?"

Or, he offers, a charity could auction off the lot of it and use the proceeds.

"I'm open to suggestions," he said.

Ansari wants charities to write to him with proposals on what they would do with either the money or the memorabilia. He'll choose the proposal he likes best.

"I have to admit I'm hoping to keep one of the Hank Aaron baseballs," he said. "There were two of them, and I'm really a baseball fan. But if somebody needs it more than I do, I'll let it go."