This reminds me of a similar experience I had before, only it was when I found a 100 dollar bill in a parking lot (on the ground).
I don’t know what I would have done with it, because I didn’t have the chance to do anything…see, as I was picking it up off the ground, another guy (who was getting into a car right near me) SAW me pick it up off the ground. And of course he says “Oh, hey…that’s mine”. He says this WITHOUT checking any of his pockets or any wallet out, mind you, so I’m not really sure how he knew it wasn’t in any of those places anymore…but what could I do? Deny giving it to him? Maybe it really WAS his. I don’t really know what I could have done in that situation, although I did try a feeble “I’m going to turn it into the store here”. I don’t know if I actually would have, but I like to think so. It turned out to be a non-issue, though, as the guy next said, more insistently “No, really, that’s mine”…so I gave it to him.
To be fair and in his defense, he was an older guy…at least 70 or older, so I lean more on the “It really was his” than the “He was just trying to take a free 100 dollars from someone who found it”…but I’ll obviously never know.
But if it was jewelry, I’d turn it in, no question.
In English law that would be “stealing by finding” for sure - it’s beyond reason that the owner could be supposed to have thrown it away (if they had, you’d be good to go), and so if you don’t take reasonable steps to return it to the owner then you have committed the offence.
I have heard that’s generally true in US law as well. But jewelry isn’t all that clear. Someone could claim they thought it was costume jewelry and not worth much. It’s hard to see a successful prosecution in this case unless the finder actually sold the piece. The OP says she had it’s value estimated at a jewelry store (I still find that part doubtful) so maybe that would be sufficient if it could be proven.
Ok, serious answer… I actually found a very expensive diamond earring once. I was a lot younger, in my early 20s, and working at a hotel. A convention had just come through that was all older people and I found a huge stud earring with a screw back on the floor. We kept it in lost and found for awhile but nobody came asking for it. I knew that if it went to housekeeping, where all L&F items wound up, that it would disappear pretty quickly - and if it was going to disappear, I wanted to be the one to disappear it.
So I took it home. But I then did contact the police and worked quite closely for awhile with a lady officer there that was in charge of such things. She said that the law where I was worked this way: they have to hold the item for 30 days, I had to put two different ads in the newspaper advertising that I found an earring (no specific details given on design or even what it was made of (Found: yellow earring with stone), and at the end of 30 days - I had to pay 10% of the estimated value of the item.
30 days came and went, I’d placed the two ads (total cost around $14), and the officer had had it valued at a pawn shop at around $1500 wholesale so it was going to cost me a hundred and fifty bucks. However, right before I came back for the ring the rule was changed to a flat $10 (WHAT?) and so that’s all it cost me to get it from her.
I know that the officer spent a good amount of time talking to the hotel and also reaching out to the conventions that had been there, to try and get the earring back.
So in the end I had a really nice diamond that I made into an engagement ring for my first wife, and it didn’t cost me much.
Oh, I did get yelled at by my manager at the hotel because she found out I took the ring after the officer reached out for details on who might have lost it. Oops. I didn’t get fired at least, just yelled at for a bit which is probably worse honestly.
I’d say it was more likely to have been thrown out by mistake, but I remember my dad’s stories. He worked at a sewage treatment plant and they would get calls from women who had gotten mad at their boyfriends and flushed their rings down the toilet. The callers would say that they’d changed their minds and then ask them to catch it as it came through.
The current volume of water going through that plant is 362 million gal/day. It would have been less, then, but still impossible to search through. Apparently some of the callers found that hard to believe. So it’s very possible that the ring was tossed deliberately.
To show that it wasn’t a women-only mistake, Dad would go on to say that men would call them to ask them to catch money. See, they’d won money at the track, but they had promised that they wouldn’t bet any more, so when they showed the win to their wives, the wives had gotten angry, ripped the bills in half and flushed them. Sorry, guy. We have these screens and they feed into these grinders.
If TV sitcoms are to be believed, the legal requirement is to turn it over to the police for a bit and if it remains unclaimed after a time, you get to keep it.
Now, a friend of mine found a diamond ring once - in her toilet (seriously. She was cleaning with the brush, heard/felt clanking, and checked and there was a ring there). She figured it must have been dropped by a past resident of the condo. Anyway, she kept the ring.
Yes, if it was clear what store they were in, I would turn it in there because the person would be more likely to be retracing their steps first than going straight to the police station. If not, then to the police.
Just wanted to add two weird coincidences that possibly nominates this for Very Vaguely Creepy.
I was going to a dinner last night so I decided to get my nails done. While sitting there, I look over at the seat next to me and see a gold watch wedged in the cushion. Gave it to the manager.
Then, I kid you not and swear on a stack of important documents, I found…
A diamond bracelet!
It was at the dinner which was at a hotel. I gave it to the person who was running the event and the Emcee made announcements throughout the night. No one had claimed it by the time I left.
Isn’t that kind of creepy?
And yes, I plan to tell my co-worker about my adventures and how I handled them so she can see what normal people do
I would hand it in to the police wherever I was, but here in Italy you have the added incentive of a legal right to a reward, I think it’s 5% of the value of whatever you found.
This is an old zombie but I probably wouldn’t even pick up the jewelry. Its not worth the potential legal problems of keeping it just to either wear it or sell it. I also wouldn’t want to take the time out of my day to track someone responsible down who would try to find the owner or keep it themselves. Maybe if there was a guaranteed reward but it would still have to be a couple hundred bucks so at the 5% above I’d have to instantly know it was worth more than $5k and the reward would have to be payable immediately if it was wait a couple of weeks and we’ll mail you a check it would probably be close to 10k before I didn’t skip over it.
Just last week I found a wallet near my apartment door with its contents partially scattered and a Leatherman tool nearby. I filed a report with the police who later sent someone by to collect the items.
I received a phone call later that day from the police requesting some more details about when I saw the items. The officer let on that the items were reported stolen from a car. I felt glad that the owner was going to get their stuff back.
I’ve seen people offer some sort of weak justification for keeping found items that don’t really hold up. At my old job, a coworker mentioned his wife noticing a Gameboy left in the shopping cart she grabbed at the grocery store. She decided to leave it in there during her grocery shopping and if nobody asked after it by the end of her trip, she would keep it.
Another coworker found a couple of bills in the ATM, apparently left behind by a previous customer who didn’t complete their withdrawal. She kept them and said it was a way to teach that person a lesson about leaving money behind. How does that work?
Anything like that is certainly insured, for much more than actual value. I’d let the insurance company take the hit. Nobody loses. Car insurers alone have about $50,000 of my money
The sad thing is that a lost $20 bill or bag of groceries is more likely to significantly impact someone’s life than a lost $10,000 tennis bracelet.
If anything, I’d be more worried about the blowback of trying to sell an expensive piece of jewelry (that may have been reported stolen) than having any concern over the person who lost it. This coming from a guy who just posted on a neighborhood page trying to find the owner of a cheap youth tennis racquet my son found in the woods near our town courts.
Seconded. Especially because, in some jurisdictions, finding property under such circumstances and failing to take reasonable steps to find the owner (such as reporting the discovery to authorities) might be considered theft and expose one to criminal liability.
So, not being in dire financial straights myself, and not particularly desiring even the minimal hardship that would come with reporting such a find, I’d just keep walking.
