Items for sale here and on ebay without remotes....

In Australia, every 6 months we have "clean up day", where you put all your junk out that you don’t want and it’s collected by council to be recycled. A friend once scored a pair of early Thiel's and a Threshold amp.
Many are audio products, TV’s, white goods, moblies ect that are faulty, and some worth grabbing if "upper end stuff" as it could be fixable, but rarely does one get the remote with it, sometimes these are fixed by the budding electronic tech and then advertised usually without the remote.

Cheers George

Its a well known phenomenon that remotes disappear into the same black hole that swallows up all the pens, cos you can never find one of them when you need one either.

On a more serious note Georges clean up day happens any and every day here in the USA.
Its pretty much accepted knowledge that anything that is put out at the end of a persons drive is fair game for anybody to rummage through.

I have put my fair share of items out and always constantly amazed at what people take!

Never yet found any decent audio but you just never know!

Yeah, I admit that I bought a Yamaha receiver at a garage sale directly across the street from me for $8. No remote of course. I was able to buy one on line at a decent price so the total cost was about $25. I’m not a surround guy but I still use that receiver with one of my t.v.’s.
I’m still diligent with my remotes though.
I just wish I could be the same about my phone.

Clean up day? Heck yes! A guy at work some years ago gave me a huge Klein & Hummel amp and preamp that he had picked up at his neighbors on one of those pick up days. He knew I was an audio guy so he just grabbed them and said here you go. The amp was massive, big meters and everything. The preamp didn't work correctly. The amp sure did.
He was a Science Fiction type so I gave him a big stack of Scifi that I had already read.
Everybody was happy.

I, on the other hand, am always very suspicious of people selling remotes without the associated equipment.  
Talk about your petty theft.  
But seriously, sometimes remotes just crap out. I've had a couple of remotes that had a button or two stop functioning.  If equipment is older, you can't buy a replacement, and the remote is for convenience & not essential; I just toss it out.  
The garage sale catagory is very valid if you also include Estate Sales. The audiophile demographic is skewing older and older, and  when the owners passes on the rest of the family (or the Estate Sale Shop) has no idea "What does this remote go with".
I've also had bad battery experience at least once, so maybe I'll just replace all my batteries in the next few weeks.  Thanks Al.