I had a summer job at Hazeltine, back in 1977 or so, consisting of electronics prototype assembly: mostly wirewrap and occasional soldering. I let it be known I'd be interested in anything interesting that got thrown away, and one day there were four large sized wire-wrap panels stuffed with 4000 series CMOS parts. I calculated; just the PINS on the panels were worth more than I earned that summer... (I still have those somewhere...)
Oh, and then there was the $40000 worth of high-density FPGAs that I found on the trash more recently. I still haven't figured out what to do with those (I mean, they're 1156pin BGA things, and I can't use them, but ... I can't just throw them away, either!)