You got your wallet back, plus your credit cards, and any business cards/notes you might keep in there. You should be glad that someone made the decision to return your property to a responsible authority. They probably didn’t want to risk being accused of being the thief.
OTOH, you lost some cash. You could consider this whole event a life lesson. ie Take better care of your wallet. And replace all of your credit cards, regardless of whether they haven’t been used yet.
I got my wallet back for free, cash included, when I was in Japan. Which was very nice.
Reading up afterwards, I see that they’ve had a problem with people “expecting” to get a “correct” reward for returning a wallet.
Apparently it’s so much hassle that some people would rather just throw your wallet away rather than put up with the extra effort created by having to negotiate, approve and accept the reward.
Fortunately, the policeman who returned my wallet didn’t give me the name and address of the person who’d handed it in, (perhaps everyone understood that I was a foreigner?), so I didn’t worry about giving a suitable reward.
After a week in The Big City, I started carrying cash in my front pocket, and a slim card case in my other front pocket (I pared down to two credit cards and a license and an insurance card). My friend, on the other hand, still loses his “Costanza Wallet” regularly.
You had an involuntary encounter with what is known as a “Partial Shithead”.
In one part - returning the wallet so your cards, etc. are recovered allows for a reduction to “partial” standing for the shithead that stole your money. Partial Shithead . . . there are lots of them running around loose.
A couple months ago at the grocery store, I found a wallet left in a shopping cart. I returned it to the front desk. I never even opened it. Not that I was thinking about, but I was probably on a security camera.
The lady at the desk said that she got a call a few minutes earlier from someone asking if her wallet had been returned.
There are many criminals in the world, and many desperate poor people. Is this news to anyone? Since the wallet was returned anonymously it might have been returned by the thief {him,her}self, but even if not, why the need to see the world in only black and white? You can turn on the news and see prominent people far more despicable than someone who picks cash up off the ground.
This. I’ve had cash stolen from my wallet three times without the wallet itself lost. In each case the thief probably did need the money more than me.
That experiment used wallets with $6 U.S., $4 equivalent of Philippine money, and some other material that might have hinted at the experiment. I wonder if the results would have been the same with $600 US.
At least you got the wallet back, as iamthewalrus(:3=. Cash is replaceable, the indignity and frustration of waiting at the DMV, that is something that stays with you forever.
I am a 30 year old man who still keeps a wallet on a chain like some punk or metalhead kid from the 90’s. It is a small gunmetal colored chain that rides along the belt line. I even keep a spare set of 3 keys hooked to the metal link and tucked in the wallet. Car, House and Garage. The chain kept me from losing the wallet getting in and out of the car and doing work, and the keys keep me from getting locked out of my house and car. Just an idea. Dickies has a really fashionable line of real leather wallets with small chains that work really well and don’t make you look like a teenager at a rock show. Check them out.