I realize it is not the same as finding a friend, but I recently found five crisp $20 bills in a used logic text book at an Amvets thrift store. I opened the book because it was written by Irving Copi, who wrote my undergrad logic text. I was paranoid it was counterfeit, but it was very much real money. To make things better, the first $20 I spent was to get a pizza and the employee said a mistake happened at the pizzeria and they accidentally made too many pies and gave me an extra large pie for free. I was on a roll.
I was with my girlfriend at a restaurant whose decor was filled with a bunch of old furniture and knickknacks. Next to our table was a stack of books. My girlfriend opened the top one and inside the cover was a bunch of money - maybe $200 in twenties?
Over dinner we talked about what to do about this, and ultimately she added $20 more to the stash and left it in the book.
I went through a couple years where I was finding cash kind of a lot. Not life changing amounts, but something.
At work in the secure area when locking up I found a 10 inside the door. I didn't know what to do with it so I tacked it on the bulletin board by the door. Really obvious. Nobody took it for 2 weeks (which is kind of remarkable), so I took it back to buy lunch.
I found a twenty in the snow on the street in cambridge. But it was new snow and easy to follow the tracks. It led to the security guard at the University. He was really thankfully to have it back.
Later that spring I found a crumpled $50 blowing down the street. It was near the faculty club. "Tumble Money" my partner said. Also 50s aren't really common. I kept 30 and donated 20 to charity.
But lamentably my good fortune in the finding of cash has come to an end. Perhaps the rise of the credit card changed my fortunes.
> At work in the secure area when locking up I found a 10 inside the door. I didn't know what to do with it so I tacked it on the bulletin board by the door. Really obvious. Nobody took it for 2 weeks (which is kind of remarkable), so I took it back to buy lunch.
When I've worked in secure areas, I've never had the slightest concern about theft. We even did an experiment where we left a couple $1 bills out on the table in the coffee area for a week... anybody could have picked them up, especially the security guards and janitors who roamed the building at night with nobody else around, but they just stayed there.
Working in that sort of high-trust environment is really, really nice.
There are some places in Asia where you can go to a coffee shop, let your $1000+ laptop on a table, go for a 30 mins walk, come back and nothing happened neither to your laptop or your bag. I actually do it all the time.
I'm sure I could be gone all day and nothing would happen but after 40 mins some instinct kicks in and I feel the urge to go back check everything's still there.
Kind of related, I had some instant noodles that I didn't much care for, so I taped some money to them and left them with a note in a common area anonymously saying that I would pay someone to take them. I had to add more money a few times before someone did. It's amusing to invert the system.
If I still worked in such a place, I'd be willing to try the experiment with $100.
On the other hand I'd speculate that in a workplace, people are more likely to pick up $3 than they are to pick up $100. "It's just a couple bucks, somebody probably just forgot it here"
> I found a twenty in the snow on the street in cambridge.
The most money I've found was in Cambridge (USA), in Harvard Square.
There was an envelope/paper on the ground of a traffic island, and in it was a bunch of cash. I couldn't see anyone around who might've just dropped it, so, on a hunch, I walked into the nearest bank. I waited in line, got to the teller, and said, this is a long shot, but did they happen to know who dropped this money. As I was saying that, someone off to the side spoke up and said it was them. They'd been making the deposit for the nearby small store where they worked. They offered me a big discount in the store.
Other than that, I track found pennies in GnuCash, to have an accurate accounting of my luck and/or sidewalk germ exposure.
This goes back to when my daughter was little, many years pre-covid. Whenever we went to a pizza restaurant that had a mini arcade with games and vending machines, she would check all of the change return trays. And inevitably, she would come back with a quarter or two. Every time. I figured maybe it was luck coming from her Irish ancestry.
I found $20 on my
block this morning in New Orleans. It belonged to my neighbor across the street fixing his car. He offered me a beer at 945 in the morning. I guess this city is a high trust environment :D
>But lamentably my good fortune in the finding of cash has come to an end. Perhaps the rise of the credit card changed my fortunes.
I'm a moderator of /r/silverbugs and we see some fun ones sometimes, if you pop over there and search "coinstar" you'll find the occasional post where members check the coin return on coinstar machines (you dump coins into a hopper, it gives you a gift card/credit at the store) and find 90% silver coins as the machines tend to reject them. Sadly all I've ever found is a nasty penny or two and a 1 euro coin which I think I chucked in the trash given I'm in central Indiana.
My father once lost quite a large amount of cash that was supposed to be used for an overseas family trip. It was a very awkward situation in our family, because he had the slight suspicion that one of us children could have taken the money. Luckily, about a year later my brother opened a large book on seafaring from my fathers shelf and found an envelope with exactly the missing sum. Only then my father remembered that he had hidden the money there and we could procees with our holiday plannings.
Cash is always interesting. Cash in a logic book too, that seems like clean money!
One time in Japan there was a car sitting in front of my apartment for months, nobody used it, nobody touched it. It seemed abandoned. It definitely looked out of place due to its age as well, though it was in good shape.
Eventually me and the pals got amused, and annoyed, and started to do funny stuff you'd only do if amused and annoyed by an abandoned car. Like, trying the doors on one restless day while you wait for the yakimo hours to arrive.
Unlocked!
A bunch of sports gear, cassettes.
Hatchback?
Sports gear...uh...sexy times stuff...and uh...a purse.
A peek in the purse. My first time seeing thick bundles of cash, basically $100s! Stacks of 'em!
I watched enough movies to know that loose $100s, found loosely, may be OK to take, or even just to ask somebody about.
But bundles, in a purse, in an abandoned car, in a neighborhood where we had heard some organized crime rumors...nope.
Creepy af though. We wondered if she had run away, disappeared, what.
I lent one my cool science fiction books to a good friend, and once I got it back and decided to re-read it myself, found that he was using a $10 canadian as bookmark. It's one of my bookmarks now, although I may use it next time I go to Vancouver. Maybe. It's pleasantly plasticky in that ineffable "Canadien" way.
Just before covid started a friend of mine found a $100 bill in a purse at Goodwill, all of our friends went nuts on Facbeook reporting back on all the random (never money) stuff they were finding in pockets of purses/garments at Goodwill over the next couple of weeks.
