EDMONTON - A few years ago, Lawrence Onyschuk was rummaging through a box at Reid’s Auction House in Edmonton when a curious-looking object caught his eye.

“I thought it was a perfume bottle and tried to unscrew the top,” said Onyschuk, a real estate agent and auction aficionado. “I wanted to see what it smelled like.”

Stymied in his attempts to get it open, Onyschuk then began banging the item, which police later identified as a live, Vietnam-era hand grenade, against the ground.

“He nearly killed all of us,” Marcel Rouleau said.

For more than 20 years, Rouleau’s auctioneering family has been engaged by the city to peddle lost and stolen articles at monthly property auctions. Left behind on city buses and LRT train or confiscated as evidence by police, the items sometimes range from the everyday to ridiculous.

“We auctioned off an artificial hip once,” Rouleau said. “It is amazing what you can find.”

On Friday, dozens of potential buyers looked over hundreds of articles that will be auctioned off Saturday beginning at 10 a.m. There is includes everything from bicycles and laptops to fishing gear and power tools, with the odd pair of handcuffs thrown in.

There are bins crammed with clothing, boxes full of deodorant, envelopes jammed with jewelry, and tailgates from two seized pickup trucks. A stage for a puppet show sits against a back wall, surrounded by office and restaurant equipment, assorted tools, and camping and hockey gear.

Out back, a treadmill and other exercise machines are covered with snow.

“It is mostly junk, but people want it anyway,” Rouleau said. “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.”

As many as several hundred people will crowd into Reid’s warehouse at 15304 Yellowhead Trail in hope of finding a bargain. Some articles sell for as little as 10 cents on the dollar. Everything is sold as is, with no guarantee.

“We have sold $5 worth of money for $20,” said Onyschuk, who occasionally lends a helping hand to the auctioneers. “We tell people to know what they are buying.”Onyschuk nearly came to an awful end the time he unwittingly wrestled with the hand grenade that had gone unseen in a box full of lost items.

Upon inspecting it, police told Onyschuk that was lucky. If the grenade had detonated as he pounded it against the concrete, it would have blown up everything within 40 metres.

“Even when I realized what it was, I figured it had to be a toy,” he said. “How does somebody lose a live hand grenade?”

mklinkenberg@edmontonjournal.com

Twitter.com/@martykej