"A shoebox full of fifties"

Factual Questions
1

Last night at a dinner party, this exchange happened:

vibrotronica: What can I get for you?

R.S.: A shoebox full of fifties!

I used to hear this phrase all the time during my ill-advised stint in the Memphis legal community a number of years back, but hearing it again brought several questions to mind.

  1. What is the origin of this phrase?

  2. R.S. is a lawyer, and I assume that’s where he picked the phrase up. It is a universal lawyer thing, a Memphis lawyer thing, or just a snappy comeback employed by members of all professions?

  3. How much money is a shoebox full of fifty dollar bills?

2

how big are your feet? :wink:

3

My guess would be a specific mob movie, or possibly bestselling fiction about the mob. Definitely mob. Maybe John Grisham (didn’t he have a Memphis location for The Firm, in fact?).

It’s not a phrase popular in the computer programming community. I’ll bet it’s a lawyer thing, maybe a Memphis lawyer thing only.

4

Well, I suppose you could figure it out with a shoebox, a pair of scissors, and a dozen old newspapers.

Offhand, I’d guess you could probably put about 20 bundles of 100 bills in a shoebox. At $50 per bill, that’s about $100k.

5

I don’t have a shoebox handy, but a pound of $50s is about $22,700.

6

I remember hearing a stand-up comic use it in his routine. Can’t think of his name (played the unrepentant wife beater on an episode of Law and Order - if I think of his name before an earlier cite is revealed, I’ll chime back in) but this was about 15+ yrs ago…

7

I think you’re underestimating, Flash-57.

A US bill is 6" long by 2.5" wide. A full strap of brand new bills (100 bills = a full strap) is about .5" high. I’m assuming an average shoe box at 12L X 8W X 6H (in inches).

6X2.5X.5 = 7.5 cubic inches of space per strap
12X8X6 = 576 cubic inches in the box
576/7.5 = 76.8 straps would fit in the box
76.8X$5000 = $384,000

OTOH, if you’re using old bills the final tally would be cut by as much as half. OTOOH, using a cowboy boot box could triple your take.

8

I heard the stand-up comic say it too, except it was “shoebox full of twenties.” Something about what a nice gift cash was: “Oh wow, a shoebox full of twenties! Exactly what I wanted! How did you know?”

9

I have used a shoebox full of twenties as an answer for what some could get me for years and years.
I don’t recall where I first heard the expression.

10

I don’t know if this is the reference but about 20-30 years ago the secretary of state of Illinois died and they found dozens of shoe boxes filled with checks and money he collected from drivers and automobile liscense fees. The money was supposed to go to the state but somehow ended up in his house. Hmmmmmmm?

11

Larry Miller.

12

This was Paul Powell, who died in 1970. At that time, over $800,000 was found in several shoeboxes and other containers in a cheap hotel room he rented. The actual source (whether bribes, embezzlement, etc) was never determined, although it was spectulated that this money (as much as it seemed to be 1970) might have only been the tip of the iceberg. No question Illinois does it right.

I think the concept of the shoebox goes back a lot farther. Well before this I recall people speaking about “hiding it in a shoebox” or “squirelling it away in a shoebox”.

13

I’ve never heard of fifties, but a “shoebox full of twenties” is popular where I come from. In fact, when I was younger, a girl friend actually wrote the number twenty a crap-load of times, cut them out and stuck them all in a shoebox for me as a birthday present, and that’s over 25 years ago.

14

While a shoebox doesn’t figure into it, my grandmother would frequently use the phrase “a quarter peck of five-dollar notes” when asked what she wanted on any given occasion. Same concept, and I expect similar versions have been around as long as there has been money, my own preference being a bushel of C-notes.

15

Perhaps the “shoebox full of twenties” has, due to inflation, grown to a shoebox full of fifties.

BTW, using Doctor Jackson’s formula above, a shoebox full of twenties would be $153,600.

16

> I think you’re underestimating, Flash-57.

Could be. I guess I wasn’t chopping them up and packing them in as tightly as you were. A couple of times a year I have to deal with a few straps of money like we are talking about (alas, however, they are ones, not fifties). They are usually old bills, so they do take up more than the 1/2" that you mention for new bills. I was useing that as my reference.

Even though the OP didn’t say, I guess I assumed that he was talking about used bills, stuffed somewhat hurriedly into the box.

Reminds me of a favorite movie, “How To Beat The High Cost of Living.”

17

I’ve never heard “shoebox full of fifties”, but I have heard “bushel of wet twenties”.

18

Here’s someone who did some “research” on a similar question: How much is inside a million dollars?

19

Aw, but who gives used bills as a gift? Wouldn’t that be crass? Perhaps we should get Ms. Manners involved.

20

> Aw, but who gives used bills as a gift? Wouldn’t that be crass?

Not at all. Try me!

As the gift giver, the apparent difference between using used and new bills is $150k. So, it would depend on the agreed-upon range of gifts for that year.

Can you imagine going into a bank, shoving the shoebox across the desk, and asking the teller to fill it up.