Does this happen often where YOU live?
In Moscow, yes. I lived there full-time from 1992 to 2008, part-time until 2022. I was set up for the scam several times, but I knew better than to pick up the money.
(That’s Moscow, Russia, not Idaho.)
Depends what you mean by “large sums.” A bag of cash, no. A stray $20? Sure, very often. And like I said above, occasionally even more. Usually on the curb or by a subway turnstyle, places people either pull out their wallet or get into cars and things fall out of their pockets. My eyes are just constantly scanning the ground when I walk.
A good place to find loose change that people drop and don’t pick up is under vending machines. (Or at least it used to be before they started accepting bank cards and paper money.) When I was in college, a few minutes on my knees usually yielded enough dimes and quarters to buy a snack and a soft drink.
A few years back, my daughter and I would harvest quarters from shopping carts abandoned in the parking lots of neighborhood supermarkets. It was a good father-daughter bonding activity that always paid off.
The most money I ever found lying on the street was a $5 bill, and I picked it up only after I made sure no one was watching me.
In life there are the droppers and the finders. I’m definitely a dropper, over the course of my life I’m probably over £200 down on accidentally dropping notes. (£60 in a single incident)
IRS purposes.
The only thing I do is look in the reject bin of the Coinstar machine. I occasionally find a silver coin. yesterday I got a nice handful with 5 wheat pennies. The oldest was a 1926 in very nice condition. Last month I got a silver ring.
The IRS cares that that the forms are filed. They are leery of cash transactions at times because amounts can be under or over reported but in this case the entire transaction is recorded so there’s nothing questionable.
Last time I checked, the IRS needed receipts - not clips of a TV show. This is why they pay them in checks.
Do you think they don’t have receipts? I’m pretty sure they don’t hand contestants a wad of bills without any signature or acknowledgement.
As mentioned, the cash they show is prop cash – they give the contestants a check.
They could give the contestants cash and have them sign something for tax / accounting purposes but they don’t. (The contestants do sign release forms and such)
Brian
So good that there was a (very) short-lived spin-off in Chicago. Only 34 episodes, according to IMDb.
ETA: and another in the UK. That one made it to 40.
ETA2: the US version was a spin-off of the UK one. Also: WOW!
Agreed. Checks are totally not sexy. Lying on a mound of gold coins, however, sounds really sensuous to me. LOL
They don’t hand them wads of bills at all.
From now on, every time I see you username, I will picture this!
It doesn’t matter. They could. There’s no IRS or other legal reason to prevent them from doing so.
AH!! LOL
I never said or implied there was a legal reason they couldn’t. One of the main reasons they don’t is because there are forms and paperwork that their legal teams need to prepare and send off and doing that on the street is unwieldy and impractical. There are several reasons they don’t give out cash, IRS paperwork is one of them.
Wow! Indeed. I had no idea there were so many international versions. Wonder if someone had franchise rights?
I tried watching the Chicago version and only made it halfway through the first episode; the lady host had zero charisma, strictly IMHO.
There’s a Canadian all Music trivia version.
Ben has been to Vegas. Had a few famous performers in the cab.