He calls it the eternal garage sale.

From his warehouse on Alliance Ave. near Jane St., Mike Hyde goes into the back room and brings out a decoy goose, an antique phone, and a Burberry watch.

The collection of items is mysterious. Were they part of a crime scene? Stolen? Left on a streetcar?

“We stopped asking a long time ago,” Hyde says.

Hyde is the founder of Police Auctions Canada. This 20,000-square-foot warehouse is the temporary holding cell for evidence cleared for resale, and lost and found items on their way to a new life with the highest online bidder.

Hyde started the business seven years ago and now has individual contracts with the TTC and different police services — Toronto, Hamilton, Halton, Owen Sound, Barrie, and St. Thomas. Hyde and his team pick up the items and after a sorting process, they are put online for auction. He keeps a commission of total sales.

“Everybody thinks I make a fortune, but it’s a lot of work,” he says. “It takes just as much to sell a $3 item as a $10,000 item, and you try to do the best job regardless of what the item is.”

The Police Auctions Canada website is Internet quicksand. Click on a pair of opera glasses and you might find yourself wondering about the stethoscope or the pairing of PlayStation 2 game Orphen: Scion of Sorcery with a humidor.

Hyde says he tries to package items that make sense. Previous combos included five solar calculators with dozens of bottles of individual body lotion (“It might sound like a weird combination but it actually makes sense for some people,” he says), and of course, the perpetual lots of 24 umbrellas, combined from the city’s collected leavings on public transit.

“Guilty as charged,” says Victor Buttigieg, the supervisor at TTC lost property. “Those are from here.”

Hyde spends six days a week at the warehouse, working with a small staff of family and friends. Everything is individually numbered, sorted, photographed, tested and posted online. Usually 100 bicycles pass through each week, and Hyde is usually the one who “bombs around” in the parking lot to make sure they work.

“People buy from people, they don’t just buy from a store, let’s just make it fun, who gives a crap,” says Hyde, a firm believer in a little levity.

He poses in some of the photos on the website, peering into a locker, riding a scooter, sitting on a speaker. His captions are thorough, and notably creative.

“Arrestingly alluring, how cute is this!” reads the description of a handcuff necklace. “Adorned with diamonds, this handcuff pendant necklace conveys edgy glamour. Shimmering with fourteen single-cut diamonds, this will surely lock up your individual style.”

On a recent pair of ladies’ jeans, with a $149 price tag still attached: “Better hurry, these jeans cost more than my car.”

Or a vintage three-speed bike: “helllooooo 1963 . . . guess what we just found: your bike.”

The TTC is the source for much of the website’s selection of electronics, sporting equipment, books and new clothing, Buttigieg says. Many of the items were left on the TTC in shopping bags and unclaimed during the two- to three-month waiting period. All personal information is cleared from electronics.

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In 2011, the TTC took home $25,800 from the partnership with Hyde’s company.

“My main goal is to attempt to give everything back,” Buttigieg says. “In my eyes, if I don’t have as much revenue, that means more people are getting their stuff back. It makes me happy.”

Peter Bailey, manager of records and property at the Hamilton Police Service, says items available for auction include evidence where ownership cannot be determined, items ordered forfeited by a judge, and items turned into police. (In accordance with the Police Services Act, found items are held for 90 days, bicycles are held for 30, and evidence is held until the appeals process is exhausted.) The Hamilton police have worked with Hyde since 2008, and usually net $25,000 a year from the arrangement.

The money goes to the auction fund, and the police services board determines how it is used — in many cases it is used to sponsor community events.

Bailey says most of the back stories of the items are boring, and certain items would never be available. There’s no, “ ‘Did this thing crack somebody in the head,’ or something like that,” he says.

On the website, some lots have an unmistakable provenance: the money counters, bolt cutters, the copper wire. Other items are domestic — an acne clearing device, plastic cereal containers, light bulbs.

Because of the seven years he has spent reselling thousands of items, Hyde is a minimalist at home. He hates clutter.

He had helped out with a few charity auctions, but didn’t have much auction experience when he started — he just saw a need and figured he could do it. He’s a warehouse guy — knows how to organize and make product move. He owns a printing business and also operated some McDonald’s restaurants. His son is an Internet developer and helped him with the website.

It’s all about making something good out of something bad, he says. Nothing what enters the warehouse goes to waste — it either goes back to police or to scrap.

“Everything gets a new use, even this little ducky,” he says, pointing to the goose, part of a gaggle turned in to Hamilton police, as it turns out. “It’s going to be somebody’s dinner — it’s for hunting eh, that’s what it’s for.”