I have owned 3 Valiants a Duster and several other Mopars. Just like the radios and TV's, I get one cheap or free (all were under $200) fix what ailed it and drive it until it died. The slant 6 wouldn't die though, In Florida you give up on a car when you can see more ground underneath your feet than floor. I subscribed to the $200 car technique until Sherri got tired of helping me push the Daytona in the rain. She married me anyway, nearly 30 years ago.
I couldn't drive a trashmobile because most of my junkyard shopping and constructing stuff from old TV's happened before I was of legal driving age. I had a working stereo and a TV in my bedroom when I was about 13. Yes both came from the trash. Kids have TV's computers and cell phones today, but they didn't in the early 60's. The dumpsters behind the TV repair shops were also good for free stuff. There was a radio station engineer, two ham radio operators and a guy that fixed TV's in his garage in my neighborhood. They were also good places to get ideas or stuff.
I have a few hundred 6AU6's and a bunch of 6BE6's, 6BA6's and all of the other radio tubes. The 6AU6 makes a decent audio amp if triode wired but they are quite variable and some are terribly microphonic.
Not to mention all of the "classic cars". Even a lowly Valiant will fetch $5,000 today, more for the Duster, not to mention the 440 Fury the Coronet, the Mustang and Camaro convertible I had. I could retire if I had saved those cars.
We used to play (American) football in the street since there was no other place to play. My parents put a stop to that when I got tackled by a 1957 Chevy! I caught the pass though.
I grew up in Miami. Plenty of cars.
I was involved in 4 seperate incidents where my bicycle (and me) was struck by a moving car. I don't know how, but I have never had a broken bone or major injury. Oddly enough the bloodiest accident that I had was caused by a TV set!
When I was a kid, lot of German equipment was thrown out of Post Office. I assume, it was an equipment captured in Germany at the end of WW-II, and 20 years after it was replaced by something made in USSR, I don't know. There were nice very precision made potentiometers with little mushroom shaped graphite nails on whippers; there were line transformers, multi-sectioned, litz in silk, Permalloy laminated, soldered inside of copper boxes filled with bee wax, with glass pass-through insulators; there were hermetically sealed silver mica capacitors, and many-many of other toys that were unusable then. The problem was, line level permalloy transformers, sizes from one to 6 inch, did not want to work as power transformers for electric toys. 
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