This isn’t me - but a friend of mine.
She found a diamond ring.
In her toilet.
She was living in a 3-story condo building, on the middle floor, and the best we could figure was that either her unit’s former owner, or the neighbors upstairs, had lost a ring down a drain and it got stuck in the pipes, then something dislodged it. IIRC, she asked the upstairs neighbors and they denied having lost any jewelry.
I have a few:
One time when I was in college and fairly poor, my SO (now my spouse) and I were walking down the street on our way to Burger King, thinking it would be really nice to have some ice cream but knowing we couldn’t afford it right then. I glanced down at the gutter–and there was a $20 bill! I hurried to snatch it up, and the two of us were able to have our ice cream and some money left over for a couple days’ worth of meals, too.
Many years later, I was at the ATM to get a twenty for lunch, and I noticed as I walked up that the ground was strewn with $20 bills! The spouse and I ran around picking them all up–I think we had close to $200 by the time we were done. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your morality) we were disgustingly honest, and immediately took them inside the bank, figuring that they might be able to figure out using their cameras who’d lost it (or that we’d taken it!) We left our names in case nobody claimed it, but we never heard back. I like to think that the real owner got it back–but in any case, it wasn’t ours and we didn’t feel right about keeping it.
When I was home from college, I went shopping with my mother. We drove around to various places, and at one point she realized her watch was missing. She was very upset–it was a nice watch, and she figured she’d never get it back. I talked her into retracing our steps to the places we’d been (figuring she was probably right). After a couple of places turned up nothing, we went back to an outdoor mall where we’d stopped an hour or so ago. I wandered around looking for it, not at all expecting to find it–and there it was, lying there in the parking lot! I was so excited to be able to take it back to her, and she was so happy to have it back.
A few years ago, i was attending a conference in Alexandria, VA. It was a 20-minute walk from the Metro stop to the hotel, going through the shopping district and then some residential blocks. At a corner in the residential area, i looked down and saw some money in the gutter. Assuming it was a couple of bucks, i bent over and picked it up. And there were 2 $100 bills and 2 $50 bills, for a total of $300.
I picked it up and looked around to see if there was anyone frantically searching the street for their lost cash. The street was deserted. I then got paranoid for a second and wondered if there was some hidden camera on me waiting to see what i would do. I contemplated going to the police station, and if there had been any identifying material accompanying the money i would have. But i figured it was just my lucky day, so i pocketed the money, and went on my way.
About 1980 I was living in NYC and working at a crappy job that paid fairly well.
Still, being young and stupid, I would get paid on Friday’s and be practically broke by the following Friday.
One weekend, I hit the bars and partied all weekend. Got time to go to work on Monday and - oops - I didn’t even have enough money to take the subway to work! So I called in sick. Had to go to the bank (this was before ATM’s) and was walking there to take out $20.00 to last me until payday on Friday.
Spotted a white envelope on the street (near Wall Street, where I was living in a loft at the time.) Actually, it was in the gutter by the street.
I picked up the envelope - regular white envelope - no name, no return address, nothing. Inside was $500 in 20 dollar bills!
Needless to say - that was one hell of a lucky day for me - probably two weeks salary at the time!
I was smart enough to put $400 in a savings account, and used that a year later towards my return trip to Berlin. However, the other $100 was used to buy clothes, party and have fun. (Back then, $100 was a lot to spend on clothes and partying!)
I once found $20 on the way to school when I was in high school. I bragged about it in English class before class started and a guy who pretty much disliked me for no reason said, jokingly, “I’ll trade you for this $10.” I said “ok” since I’d still be up $10 and we’d both win, and I traded him. He reconsidered whatever had led him to dislike me and ended up becoming one of my better friends for the remainder of high school.
Then he died.
Back in the early 90s a friend and I were standing in a metro station in Rome. We looked down at the tracks and noticed a 50,000 Lira bill (at the time, around $35 USD) lying there looking terribly lonely. Bob was an amazingly fast guy, and being a physics major interested in trains would have known “where not to step.” The problem was that we had no way of knowing how much time would elapse before the next train arrived. Looking down the tunnel did no good, as the track curved inwards toward the platform. We stared longingly at the bill for what turned out to be more than 10 minutes until the next train finally arrived. Hoping against hope, we stood back and waited on the platform. Naturally, once the train was gone the bill had vanished. Alas.
When I turned in my taxes this year, the IRS sent me $400 more than I’d asked them for. A few weeks later I got a letter saying that I qualified to use Schedule M. Looking at the schedule, I assume it’s because the department I work for doesn’t contribute to Social Security for us. (We get PERS instead.)
I was cleaning out a cabinet and came across a couple of $100 traveler’s checks that I had hidden away and forgotten. It was great timing, as my girlfriend and I were going to a RennFaire the very next day. Going to a RennFaire is always fun, but it’s even more enjoyable with an extra $200 to spend!
We were travelling, very poor, living on E100 a week, kicking our heels in Koln while we waited for a poste restante parcel from the mother-in-law (which never arrived; it turns out, Deutsche Post doesn’t do poste restante parcels, though they had us waiting almost two weeks before they told us that). We were going to the post office every day, getting more and more depressed as every day the package wasn’t there. One day when we had literally no money left for the week, we walked out of the post office and found a little net bag (like the ones for laundry tablets) on the ground. My partner picked it up and found that we had E30! It sounds like a pissy little amount, but it was a third of our budget for the whole week. We spent it at Brauhaus Sion, on Kolsch and sausage sold by the meter! There was no way we could have gone there without that money. It would have been another night of potatoes and onions with a glass of tasty water.
Grumpy & I were coming back from our honeymoon, which hadn’t been as honeymoony as you would hope. I had developed bronchial pneumonia and my hands had gotten so swollen, I had taken off my pseudo-engagement ring. It ‘disappeared’ on the one day I felt good enough to leave the room and try to see the town.
So we are driving back, and I am finally feel better, and we decide to do some shopping. We spend most of our cash, but it’s okay - because we have a nice chunk in the bank. And then we finally get home and back to our apartment.
All the wedding gifts are piled on our bed (we decided to wait to open them until after the honeymoon) and the living room and kitchen is a mess from the pre-wedding bachelor’s party and our cats (who used to love to pull the afghans around in their teeth - and anything else they could pull down/off the wall.)
And there’s no food in the fridge. And we spent our cash shopping.
So I run to the ATM - only the network is down and we can’t access anything. We didn’t have a VISA/MASTERCARD logo on our debit card - so we couldn’t even charge it. And after a week of being sick my stomach was very, very empty.
We end up tearing in to the wedding gifts, hoping that someone has snuck a $20 in to one of the boxes (we had taken the cards with us on the honeymoon, and deposited those checks already). No such luck.
I was searching through every pocket of every coat for even a $1 when I spied a bit of green sticking out of the desk drawer. I pulled it open - and there was a deposit envelope filled with about $100 cash.
Evidently, in all the flurry of pre-wedding activities, Grumpy had cashed his paycheck from his part-time job but had never gotten around to putting it in his wallet.
We ate like kings that night, my friend. Or at least the pizza tasted like we did.
The most money I ever found in the street was a couple of $20’s. It was at a time when I really needed it.
Back in the early 1990s, when the vinyl LP was disappearing, I happened upon a dollar store selling unused (still in shrink wrap) LPs at 7 for a dollar. I looked through the bins and saw that a lot of them were obscure-looking 1970s-era funk and soul. I picked out about $15 worth, took them a few miles up the road to a used-LP store, and sold the lot to them for about $150.
I’ve made some good purchases at yard sales but haven’t actually sold any of them for big money, so the gains there are more hypothetical.
I think kayaker wins the thread. Very-well played. Kind of restores my faith in humanity.
I hope you still have it - a copy is currently going for $3,650.00 on ebay at the moment, after 18 bids…
It has long been my custom that if I tell a funny story that ends up falling flat, I’ll add “…and then I found ten dollars.” It makes any story better. Even ones where it makes absolutely no sense in context. Because, hey: ten dollars.
So a couple of years ago, I was on a trip to Israel with a bunch of other Americans, all of us in our mid-twenties. I got into the practice of switching my “ten dollars” line for “fifty shekels,” which was equivalent to about ten bucks at the time.
Towards the end of the trip, we went to Hamat Gader, which is a hot spring. It’s built up like a gigantic swimming pool, or several swimming pools all connected together, and it’s about hot tub temperature, with clear clean water. There were hundreds of people already frolicking around in it when our tour group joined in.
After half an hour horsing around in the water, I felt the current sweep something against my leg. It felt like a leaf. I pulled it out, and sure enough, it was a fifty-shekel bill.
As long as I live, I will never encounter another such wonderful coincidence, I’m sure.
I found a diamond bracelet once, and was able to find the owner inside the business that was near where I found it, The owner put it back on and barely said thank you.
The most cash I’ve ever found (and kept) is $20 on a couple occasions, most recently on Ellis Island in 2006–I think it was the lost lunch money of some kid in a school group doing a tour based on an attached note, but there was no name and no way to track down who lost it. I found about $80 or $100 in cash on the floor by the cash registers in the cafeteria at work a year or so ago, but I gave it to the cashier to try to find out who it belonged to. Never heard anything more about it.
A number of years ago however, I was at a Mardi Gras parade in Baton Rouge. People on the floats were throwing the doubloons, those aluminum coins that anyone who has been to Mardi Gras probably knows about. This parade however, was throwing some of their older stock of doubloons, including an unauthorized Star Wars-themed doubloon from the late 1980s. I acquired 3 of them. Some years later, during the early days of eBay when i was a poor grad student, I sold them one at a time for a total of about $200.
When I was a travel agent, I had a client who was a sanitation engineer, aka garbageman. He found a diamond cocktail ring in his truck, at the end of the day, AFTER he’d already emptied the load at the landfill. He was washing and sweeping out the truck when he looked down and noticed it sparkling. He ended up getting to keep it, and the appraisal said it was worth several thousand dollars. He gave it to his wife. Amazing how it somehow stuck in the bed of the truck.
It’s not major, but I recently discovered that, in addition to the usual post-pub shrapnel, I’d been filling my change jar with pound coins for the last year. Nice surprise!
Some years ago, my nephew Dave was living with me and my hubby; he was maybe 16 or so. For some reason, he and I were at an amusement park together (might’ve been King’s Dominion, might’ve been Busch Gardens, don’t remember. . .something in Virginia). We were standing in line for a popular coaster, and both looked down at the same time and saw a $20.00 bill. We discussed it. . .no one around us seemed to be looking for lost money. We agreed that if we turned it in to Lost and Found, the min wage drone behind the counter would probably just pocket it. I mean, seriously, in a big amusement park, how can you identify a lost 20? So we decided to use it to buy a nice lunch!
In the “Opportunities to be Had” department: a few years ago, my hubby was out of work, our finances were in dire straits, and we had kids to feed. One day we were in Gabriel Bros. which is a discount-store chain in this region, and I found some Spanx brand shape-wear for 99 cents a pair! Well, I didn’t know how much I could sell them for, but I was pretty sure I could make a pretty nifty little profit on them. We bought all the store had (about 60 units) and I sold them on eBay for somewhere between $10.00 and $30.00 a pair! Went back, bought them out again, went to other Gabe’s in the region, etc. For several months, the profits from that underwear bought our groceries!
I’ve lived in my house for 5 years now and just today I found a quarter embedded in my concrete driveway.
Not sure if that counts though since I have no intention of chipping it out to spend it.