Quarter. Mostly because I don’t carry much cash/change. And if I lose a quarter then I can’t get the soda I wanted from the vending machine.
A penny. Every day at school I’ll walk across the lunch area on my way to the office scanning the ground for dropped change. I usually find enough for about a 6-pack/month. Well worth the effort.
Some of it may have been. On the other hand, anyone who knew me said “Would you quit stopping to pick up pennies?!” more than once, usually with a great deal of frustration in their voice.
It didn’t hurt that for two years of that I walked about a mile to school and back each day. For six months, I had a shorter walk, but through a densely populated section of Berkeley. I probably scored $2 of it at a single weekend trip to Disneyland.
So you steal from your students! 
Legally though, what amount of money do you have to go to the police about and report as “found money?” And is the amount temporally restricted? As in, if you find ~$100 over the course of a year in your school’s cafeteria, does that break some law if you pocket it without reporting it, even if picking up a single penny wouldn’t run afoul of the law?
I have no idea. Anything bigger than a $20 I’d turn over to the Activities office, in case somebody reported it. Less than that there is usually zero chance of identifying who the cash belonged to.
I’ve actually had days where I was bending over every 5 feet or so, picking up pennies. Makes me think the kids were pitching them, if they weren’t scattered all over the place.
I’d be bummed to see five bucks go down a sewer grate, but I can’t be arsed to walk an extra block to a different store to save the same amount when I’m out shopping.
If we’re talking large purchases, amounts of several digits can feel pretty much the same to me. It’s not like I would care about a difference of a few bucks when buying a car, but somehow that becomes really important when I go out later the same day to celebrate my new wheels with a beer.
I’m not sure if my brain really understands money.
5ct€ is the smallest denomination we have here, and I’ll pick it up if I drop it. Not always when walking though, because sometimes it’s not practical.
On the other hand, lots of other Euro countries still use the 1ct & 2ct coins, but you can’t use them here. I try to lose those on purpose!
If it was easy I’d pick up a nickle, but if it rolled away I’d not bother going after it. If it was a dollar I’d probably take some effort to get it it back and feel disappointed if I couldn’t. I might pick up a penny but more out of playful superstition than monetary value.
A quarter. I actually use them for something (laundry, car wash). Anything smaller is practically worthless individually, though collectively they can be worth something when I dump a jar of them into the Coinstar machine.
Video of Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining how wealthy Bill Gates is by calculating the smallest amount of money Gates would pick up from the sidewalk (Youtube). Not quite the same as having it fall down a grate, but still.
For me, I’d pick up a dime and be bummed about losing a dollar down a grate.
Somewhere around $10.
A bit bummed? Maybe a ten or twenty. I wouldn’t be pissed about it until probably a fifty.
IMHO the question about what I would pick up vs. what I wouldn’t think twice about losing have two different answers. I would pick up any amount of small coinage, whereas I wouldn’t concern myself about losing a pocketful of change.
But, in my case there are peculiar reasons for both answers.
- I travel for my job so I am always going through airports. Pocket change is frankly a nuisance and I am quite happy to never have any.
- On the other hand, my crew of bicycling pals has a yearly contest to see who can find the most pocket change while out riding. We accumulate it throughout the year and count it at the end.
So, I am of two minds.
Interesting. I’m exactly the opposite. Any money of mine that I lose I would want to get back. I’d be bummed to see a penny go down the sewer grate, because that was my penny. But I wouldn’t necessarily bend down to pick up a penny on the ground. I think a quarter is the smallest amount that I’d be guaranteed to pick up, although I have picked up pennies, nickels and dimes before. It depends how much of a hurry I’m in, and whether the condition of the coin is requires any extra effort (is it in a puddle?)
I pick up pennies when I see them. I’ll even stop and turn around my bicycle to get one - if it’s safe to do so.
Still I’d be happy if the US Government stopped making the damned, nearly worthless things.
I pick up quarters and dimes.
I’d be the most upset to lose a five or ten dollar bill. I walked away from a self serve register and forgot my change last year. I had put in a twenty to pay. My mistake cost me about 7 bucks in change. yeah, it bugged me for being so careless.
Pennies. I guess. I hand over all my change to my son, and he stores it up for vacation money. We cashed in about $80 the first time we cached in, and $50 last time.
I don’t care about coins at all. I don’t like to carry them and generally dump them in a tip jar when I get them in change.
If I dropped a penny I’d pick it up. But not because I care about the penny, because I don’t like littering. I’d be vaguely annoyed that I had to carry this penny around, and would be looking for some non-littery place to get rid of it.
Contest is everything. Like that one time I forgot to use my Kroger’s card. I could have saved a $1.50 dammit!
But if I’m at a restaurant and I don’t want to wait for my change back? Screw it! I’ll let the waiter have the $10 bill instead of waiting for change and giving him the $5 like I originally wanted.
A dollar, especially if it’s paper money (which screams MONEY more than coins.)