Does this include the 1914-D penny I found in a parking lot? I held onto it for many years, finally selling it on eBay, for several hundred dollars.
On a Christmas Eve back in the early 80s, I was walking around the now defunct Mounds Mall with a couple of friends. I found a folded, well-trodden twenty on the floor. We went to the Char-Lu and drank it up.
Of late, I have been converting my change into Amazon credit at Coinstar kiosks. Sometimes, people forget to check the coin reject tray. I found well over a dollar’s worth of dirty coins there last time. By dirty I mean they looked like coins one would scrape out of an old wishing well. I took them because they were still money.
One night I was meeting a friend at the place where he would get me together with his friend to get me some stuff. There was a problem with the stuff, so the other person had to go home for the correct stuff. My friend was working, so I wandered around the block, and in the darkness, glimpsed something scattered by the side of the street. I quickly gathered it up and walked to the bus stop on the next corner to count the six twenties and three ones.
When the there of us met up again a short while later, I showed them what I had found and asked if they would like one (of the twenties), which they each gladly accepted. My friend said “Hey, it’s wet, you’re not kidding about finding this.”
I just went to a car wash to rinse the pollen off my car. I put 4 quarters in the thing and rinsed my car. When I was hanging the wand up I saw quarters on the concrete. I picked them up. It was $4.25. I put my fingers in the coin return and kept getting quarters dropping. It was another $3.75.
So I went to the automatic car wash next door that costs $6.00. I have a shiny car. Yay!
Shiny Sedona Orange Metallic!
Last December on a Saturday, I went out for my morning run. I was on a fairly well traveled road, when I saw a plastic bag that appeared to have some money in it. I put it in my pocket and continued on my run. When I got home, I counted it and it was over $2000. I thought about keeping it, but I eventually turned it in to the police. I haven’t heard anything from them, but I’m imagining that they had a very good Christmas party.
I walk every day and I find stuff, including coins and occasional bills.
I once had a hard time counting out the register at work, and then had to return phone call. Knowing I’d missed the bus at the one bus stop, I went down to the bus stop on the other cross street to catch another bus. While waiting, I noticed a bank cash envelope under the seat. I picked it up, opened it and found a nickel…and a fifty dollar bill.
I wonder how many people noticed it but didn’t bother to look.
I found a folded-up hundred dollar bill in a grocery store once…turned out to be a religious tract. :mad:
I found $100 in a wallet of my late mother. Now I was sure I had gone through this wallet before. It was now over a year after her death and was putting away items that I would no longer need as the estate was being settled. Thanks, Mom. The cash went to a homeless mother and her children.
About 15 years ago I was out shopping on an extremely windy day; hardly a soul was outside. I had to pick up a birthday cake at a local bakery. I got out of the car and was fighting with the wind to close the door. All of a sudden a piece of green paper appears against my shoe, held in place by the wind. It was a $50 bill. I picked it up and looked around. Again, no one was outside as far as the eye could see. It paid for the cake and then some.
About five years ago, I pulled out of a shopping center behind a large older car. About a mile down a narrow road, I suddenly saw money flying around, with a couple bills sticking to my windshield wipers. I pulled over and saw that there were more bills blown up against a chain link fence. After collecting as many as I could (about $440 in twenty dollar bills), I was just standing there trying to decide if I should call the police, try to find the car in front of me, or what. No need. The car came back down the road. It turned out to be an older lady who had placed an envelope with $500 in it on top of her car while unlocking it and then forgotten all about it. She was so grateful that she insisted on taking my wife and I out to a (very nice) restaurant for dinner later in the week.
I found a 10 dollar bill on the ground at the Renaissance fair one year.
A friend found something valuable… in her toilet at home. She was cleaning it with a toilet brush and I guess heard a clink, and wound up using the brush to fish out the cause - and it was a diamond ring.
She was living in a condo, and had been for several years. Her best guess was that it had fallen in there during the time the previous owners lived there, and gotten stuck somehow - and something finally dislodged it. She had no way of contacting the previous owners - so, hey, free diamond ring!
Not sure this counts. I was at a Blue Oyster Cult concert in a small venue. I went to the bar, bought a couple drinks, and paid with (what I thought was) a $20 bill. The bartender gave me an odd look then went off and came back with change for a $100 bill. Now I had gone to an ATM just before the concert and withdrew $60. So either the ATM accidentally had a $100 bill in it or the bartender mistook my twenty for a hundred. Either way, I bought drinks for my friends the rest of the night!
My son and i went to the beach on Saturday with the metal detector. We ranged around for about 90 minutes and eventually found $.25! Also a bottle cap! Oh, glorious day! LOL
My son also found what we believe to be a chunk of petrified wood. Coolest find of the day, even if it wasn’t what we’d set out looking for.
My mom runs the parish’s rummage sale. A couple of years ago, one of our older parishioners had died, and her heirs donated a bunch of her old clothes and other belongings to the sale. She apparently had a habit of leaving money in her pockets, and in old purses, and tucked into books, and otherwise all over the place. We ended up finding a few hundred dollars, which Mom accounted as donations to the church.
A quarter today at the pool. 12 feet down. I kidded the ladies who had been in that lane for not picking it up. (They don’t even get their hair wet.)
Two odd-ish things about it: 1974 and with red paint. Like one of those old juke box dimes a.k.a. “house money”.
When I was living in Singapore, I found a twenty dollar (Singapore) bill in a trash bin. Not a bad chunk of change for a ten or eleven year-old kid with a seven dollar-a-week (less if I didn’t do all my chores) allowance.
Found a $100 bill while waiting in line to buy a t-shirt at an Eagles concert. It was just enough to buy 2.
I was driving into the parking garage at work and saw a $10 bill on the ground at the entrance. I stopped, opened the car door, and just leaned down and grabbed it.
I was at the deli in an office building, and saw a $20 sitting on top of the gum and candy just under the counter at the cashier. I handed it to the cashier. I don’t know if she pocketed it or put it in the register, but I figured she needed it more than I did.
While dumping my food tray in a mall eating court, I found a $100 bill in the trash. Probably left on a tray by a person who forgot it and dumped it. I kept it.
As a store cashier, I cannot keep any money I find in the store. I have to turn it over to a supervisory immediately. Since there’s video cameras on us at all times, I keep the rule.