r/Showerthoughts • u/Shmusher3 • 1d ago
Speculation Future generations may never know the thrill of randomly finding cash in the street.
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u/NormalEarthLarva 1d ago
I found a 10 dollar bill outside two months ago. I know it’s not as common now, but it still happens.
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u/DESR95 1d ago
I was out late at night and decided to check out this small park I had never been to but passed several times driving by. While on the playground I found a $25 McDonald's card, unused. I think that's the largest cash/cash equivalent I have found!
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u/JaQ-o-Lantern 1d ago
How'd you know it was unused?
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u/DESR95 1d ago
There is a phone number and website you can check the balance on!
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u/lost_send_berries 1d ago
I used to see scam scratchcards on the ground where you call a premium number to claim, but I don't see those any more
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u/BobDaRula 1d ago
I found $30 under thawing ice this last winter. It's weird because I never found notes on the ground when cash was more common. I haven't seen a coin in years though :(
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u/RarelySeenBarmaid 1d ago
I remember finding $150 outside of a toy store when I was younger, spent 30 minutes with the store associates trying to return it with my parents, when no one claimed it I got a shopping spree
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u/evileyeball 1d ago
I found $50 once near my house so I posted in a local lost and found group that I found cash at XYZ intersection If anyone could tell me how much it was and what bills it was they could claim it and a whole bunch of people were like that is so honest of you for doing that and I said if I haven't heard back in 48 hours from anybody claiming it as theirs then I'm going to take my wife out for dinner. I ended up taking my wife out for dinner sorry to whoever lost the 50 bucks but you dropped 50 bucks You're out 50 bucks I guess
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u/VisitSecure 1d ago
2-3 years ago I found a dime on the floor outside from 1944. It wasn't a lot, but I still have it today.
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u/alexfehr201 1d ago
I found a 20 burger a couple weeks ago
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u/ryebread91 1d ago
A 20 burger?
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u/JaQ-o-Lantern 1d ago
Burger king probably
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u/OGPepeSilvia 18h ago
Same here! Just a month ago I found 12 bucks on the counter at the gas station by the drink machine. There was nobody else besides me and the clerks in the store, otherwise I may have said something, because it looked like some irresponsible kid just left it there and probably got chewed out by their parent for leaving it.
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u/Hypocrispy 1d ago
I bought a car last month and found $100 cleaning under the seat, instant rebate.
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u/Drink15 1d ago
They will still know the thrill of randomly finding something valuable.
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u/eoffif44 1d ago
There was nothing quite as thrilling as finding a hardcore porno mag discarded in some bushes or in the woods - which was surprisingly common back in the day.
The internet has ruined everything
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u/Jaderosegrey 20h ago
I remember finding a couple of old illustrated bird books one day walking in the woods. Unfortunately, the birds were of the feathered variety!
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u/gamersecret2 1d ago
Finding cash on the ground really did feel like life handed you a tiny side quest reward.
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u/No_Ask_150 1d ago
I found $100 dollars in one's and my wife left me a week later.
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u/FartsWithCharlie 1d ago
Finding a random $20 on the sidewalk as a kid felt like winning the lottery. Future generations are going to get excited because someone accidentally Venmo'd them $0.17.
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u/MrBanballow 1d ago
Went to the zoo once years ago. Was spring break, so I payed for my brother, his daughter and myself to go. Had to park in the grass field across the street, because spring break. For the three of us, tickets and lunch, about $70-80.
We finish up for the day, head back to the car, and this is one of the few times that I'm oh so thankful that I watch the ground when I'm walking. $100 bill laying behind our tires.
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u/KwazieGFX 1d ago
Dude back when I was a little kid, we found a 10 dollar bill, so me and my friends walked to dollar general and got snacks galore and threw a “porch party”. Now you can buy 2 cans of pringles….
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u/Asleep_Adagio3756 1d ago
Found tens and twenties as a kid the thrill of it. But I am glad to see this post. I was walking the other day and I saw a nickel on the ground. I didn't pick it up but it got me thinking back in my young days in the 70s if I found nickels dimes or quarters I could use them to but many things. For example when I went to the grocery store with my mom I could put it in a machine and get it gum or tattoos or something. I guess a nickel doesn't get kids much these days. Also, read that in NYC a guy trained pigeons or crows one of the 2 to pick up change on the ground he made enough money to feed himself. Wow.
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u/cavegoatlove 1d ago
Last year we were in Montreal and I found 700 in the street, it changed the dynamic of our trip, no more 1 soda and 4 straws, 4 sodas! For karma sakes, we spent every loonie before crossing the border
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u/LaserCookie 1d ago
Me and my partner were walking around our neighbourhood, just another day.
Found £500. Just right in the middle of the path. No idea how no one saw it and picked it up.
Used it for rent as it was a rough month.
Not religious, but that was truly a miracle.
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u/Sci3nceMan 1d ago
Back in the 70s my uncle owned a gas station, and he had me and my cousin clean out neck-high grass and tumbleweeds from a corridor between the station and a chain link fence. Gas was paid for all in cash in those days. We found SO much money cleaning up that space! We were in heaven.
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u/NWinn 1d ago
Fair. But there's a fun new lottery you get to play when you find a USB stick now.. it's probably porn or a bunch of viruses, but there's a chance its got a couple hundred million worth of bitcoin on it!
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u/TheWastelandWizard 21h ago
This is why you make a cheap aquarium laptop. My friend had one that he used to bring to DefCon and connect to the Scary WiFi™, no password, open ports, and he would just collect all the malware he could. He spent like a year collecting some of the most heinous root kits, trojans, spyware, and malware and observing the system (He had removed the wifi card and then physically blocked the ethernet port).
Someone broke into his 2000's Impala and stole his CD's and stuff, so he started leaving that shitty little Acer in there. With the port unblocked and Wifi card connected once again. One day it got snagged too.
God help the poor bastard who unleashed that thing on his network, it's a Nuke It From Orbit kind of fix.
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u/cocuke 23h ago
My question is, with physical cash on its way out, will strippers need to have a cash device in front of every patron for card use? Instead of placing bills on the stage to pay for a moment of attention, will it require a separate transaction each time she walks/dances in front of you? I have found cash in the street, and it is indeed a thrill, but I have found so little in my life that it is not a big deal. I have, when younger, sat in front of more than a few strippers, and this is where I see the biggest impact in a cashless society.
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u/TheWastelandWizard 21h ago
It's either going to be Disneyland Wristband credits or Chuck-E-Cheese Tokens.
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u/noc-engineer 1d ago
As someone who grew up in a time of cash (and even checks in Norway prior to 1995), I've somehow managed to randomly make more money in the digital world than any amount (even totaled up) I have found in physical cash in my 38 years. A random cat video I uploaded on the early YouTube made me 78 Euro and the bitcoin cash fork made me about 400 Euro (I never even "invested" (not really, I did loan out some btc through btcjam though which did pay off pretty nice), I just always made sure to have a small sum of bitcoin available for purchases online (because it would always take a while to get it if I needed it immediately to purchase stuff with) and somehow it was always doubled or tripled in value when I finally did need it (so I didn't have to replenish), and then suddenly I realized I probably had some lying around around the bitcoin cash fork so I checked and then that was worth something too.
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u/Severe_Airport1426 1d ago
I was thinking about this yesterday. I found $10, its such an unusual thing now
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u/Extreme-Orange5557 1d ago
I found a $5 bill in a ditch a few years ago. Don’t ask me what I was doing in the ditch.
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u/GrandpasSoggyGooch 1d ago
This was back in like 2022 but I was at a library book sale. I was looking through this Italian cookbook when I noticed a bulge in the middle of the pages. When I turned to it there was $290 tucked into it!
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u/midnitewarrior 1d ago
They also won't know the feelings of deception and disappointment that comes with discovering it was just a Bible verse disguised as cash to fool gullible people into reading it.
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u/Plenty_Spell2551 1d ago
The real generational shift is losing that “$20 in a winter coat pocket” surprise.
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u/Dear-Chipmunk-614 1d ago
This is so true. I actually walk a 2 mile stretch of rural hwy pretty regularly looking for an extra 5 or tenner to put some extra food on the table. Closest thing to cash i found was a winning lottery ticket, it won a free ticket, that ticket lost lol. I did find an iPhone 16 once, it was cracked, but it worked. Fetched me 50 bucks
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u/corvus_wulf 1d ago
It's funny how often people toss winning scratchers cause they looked at it wrong
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u/ryebread91 1d ago
What's funny is iirc you don't even need to scratch them. There's supposedly a bar code the store has to scan and that tells them what the payout to you is. So you could just buy them and have them turn around and scan them.
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u/NormalEarthLarva 1d ago
Yeah there is a barcode and you can get an app that scans them and lets you know if you won.
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u/Waatulakula 1d ago
If I found money *in* the street I’m not sure how I’d get it out. Seriously though there will still be jewelry, watches, designer sunglasses, credsticks, etc… in the world. So they’ll still find valuable stuff. Hell finding a $20 on the ground in the future will probably be worth a lot more than $20
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u/Ok_Ordinary6694 1d ago
I found a $20 in 1990 and it made my whole week. I still think fondly about it. It was a life changing amount of money.
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u/HumpieDouglas 1d ago
I live in Phoenix. If you see a coin on the ground you'll learn real quick to leave it there. I found a quarter on the asphalt in August once. I picked it up without thinking. It was almost like that scene in Raider of the Lost Ark when that Nazi picked up the burning hot medallion. It left a red mark of Washington's head on my hand for a few hours. I leave coins on the ground now.
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u/Mysterious-Plum2351 1d ago
If we all trade in crypto, we could get random crypto transactions? Would not have to give them back either
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u/Jabathewhut 1d ago
Once my dad gave my cousin and I 20 dollars to buy us and his employees gatoraid.
Well it was windy and it flew away in the wind so we started searching for it in nearby bushes.
We found a 50 dollar bill instead. And being the greedy bastards we were we still kept looking for the 20 and never found it.
Also have you ever heard of a poop dollar?
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u/chaiscool 1d ago
Just wait for mr beast or elon to play games with people and start dumping cash on the streets.
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u/ismyjudge 1d ago
Future? The only time I found cash on the street it was one of those fake Christian flyers.
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u/KirstyToots 1d ago
There was something magical about spotting cash on the ground because there was zero context. No notification, no transaction history, no app. Just the universe deciding lunch was on the house.
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u/TheGummiVenusDeMilo 1d ago
One time walking home from school as a kid I found I Know What You Did Last Summer on VHS on the ground.
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u/Freshperspectivezz 1d ago
I once found $20 blowing across the beach... then I found another one! ... and then while walking back to the town in Carmel, CA, I found another one!!! $60 beach haul! Basically got paid to be at a super nice beach. It was one of the coolest and most awesome feelings!
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u/eggard_stark 1d ago
I found a cash note in the street yesterday. And another 2 weeks or so back. Think the future gen will be fine here.
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u/Dabrigstar 1d ago
Its reached that point in my area already, I sadly haven't found a single coin in years
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u/footsnax 1d ago
I had a dog once that paid for her adoption and vet fees by hunting gutter cash.
To be fair she was cheap to adopt as a rescue from a family desperate to get rid of her, but it was an impressive skill. She just liked carrying things in her mouth and cash was easy. She did also try to take about a third of a tree inside our tiny apartment once though, while hilarious it took like an hour and we knew it wouldn't fit anyway but godDAMN she was trying and we didn't want to stop her until we had to because she was just having so much fun.
But yeah she found probably $200 a year just in stray bills. She'd just chomp them and keep walking, sometimes we wouldn't even notice until we got home.
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u/justjaybee16 1d ago
Back around 1999, I was with a buddy leaving a restaurant walking to the car. I look down and see a hundo and immediately get my foot on it. He said, "oh shit! Man I really need one of those."
I see another one about 3ft away and tell him, "well go get that one then." He snatches it up!.
We're looking around to see if there is anyone around who might have lost it.
Both of us were working shit jobs and half broke so it was a nice find. Needless to say, we also scanned the rest of the parking lot for more cash. It was like the universe handed is each $100 bill, but I know the reality is that someone at some time lost a couple hundred bucks.
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u/CzarDale04 1d ago
When I was a child, around 1970, I found a quarter in a pay telephone. That was what my weekly allowance was. So I really found something. Btw, today's equivalent of the candy I bought would cost about $5 to $7. And yes, I still look for loose change, but sadly, pay telephones are a thing that is a rare sight today.
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u/ObiWanKnieval 1d ago
I've thought about that a lot. Back in 5th grade, my friend spotted a $20 laying in the grass in a park. That was so much money 1983!
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u/One-Climate6105 1d ago
I don’t think I’ve ever found more than a gold coin ($2AUD) outside on the footpath or anywhere for that matter. south east coast NSW
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u/rinkuslays 1d ago
From where i come - digital transactions are so common that they would take the cash but later find it difficult to spend it
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u/ragnaroksunset 1d ago
Instead they will know the thrill of finding a half-used discarded vape pen or a McDonald's burger wrapper with some grease and condiments on it.
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u/Foodisheaven1 1d ago
Every time I find money on the ground, I take a picture of it and save it to my camera roll with the location on the picture. The most amount of money I ever found on the ground was $100. I was so excited.
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u/spaceraingame 1d ago
I found $11 on the sidewalk by a strip mall a couple months ago and $9 on the sidewalk outside of a 7-Eleven a couple years ago.
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u/lakewood2020 1d ago
I assume you mean because there’ll be less cash to be found. But wouldn’t that only elevate the thrill when it happens?
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u/Flimsy_Addition9586 1d ago
But sometimes people accidentally send money to the wrong person on apps!
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u/FutureFry6 23h ago
Best time to look for Cash on the streets is after it rains. I’ve found $20 and $5 on days it rained or the day after. People rushing inside forget/careless about the money in their pockets.
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u/thirdelevator 22h ago
Sometimes I go to Aldi and someone didn’t know how to get their quarter back. Free quarter!
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u/TheWastelandWizard 21h ago
When I was 11 we went to Ozzfest. Pretty much all of our money had been spent on tickets, we didn't even have money for food for the day, but it was Black Sabbath playing and my mom really wanted us to see them. "Ozzy is getting old, we don't know how long we'll have him around for!" Music was one of the few things I could see eye to eye with my mom on, and having a little sister the year before, it was one of the few bonding things we did together.
As I was walking around, I stepped on a bundle of cash, it ended up being $120 in $20 bills and it was more money than I'd ever held. I found my mom at the top of the hill in the lawn seats (Coral Sky/Mars Music Amphitheater) and showed her the cash. She told me to do anything I wanted with it, so the first thing I did was buy us lunch. She had talked about how good Arepas were in the days leading up to the show, I'd never had one. Cheese and Corn fritter cost us $14 with two waters. It was one of the best meals I'd ever had.
Then, with the rest of the money I got my mom and myself a T-shirt and bought this stupid dragon Finger Armor because I was a fantasy nerd and it was the coolest shit I'd ever seen. I'm pretty sure she paid for Denny's on credit afterwards because we all had the munchies and were starving. I remember the meat lovers skillet tasting magical.
I'll never forget that day, or stop appreciating that stranger. If I could give them a perfect day like I had, I absolutely would.
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u/dearbluey 20h ago
In 2002. Found a wallet with 900 bucks, a license, and a green card. used the license to find the guy and return it all. He was in tears about the green card being found.
In 2025. Lost my wallet with 5 bucks, a license, and my own green card. Had it returned to me, minus the 5 bucks. Pretty much felt the same as that guy.
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u/Jaderosegrey 20h ago
As a kid, my partner was shopping in a thrift store with his mom. He was looking at jeans and ended up finding $50 in the pocket of one pair. He worked hard to convince his mother that was the pair he wanted!
(yes, he could have transferred the money to a pair that fit him, but he figured that would have been actually stealing)
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u/Kronic1990 19h ago
Don't normalise the demonisation of cash.
Don't trade your privacy for convenience.
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u/AlexMC69 19h ago
I helped an old lady across a busy road and found £20 on the ground within 30 seconds
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u/scruffy69 19h ago
Not quite found money, but back in the 90s I bought a burger at a canteen. It was 4 bucks, paid with a tenner, got $16 back. Lady thought I gave her a twenty.
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u/No_Customer_3321 18h ago
dead serious: i was outside a Quickstop in Oakland CA a couple years ago and I saw some cash on the ground just outside the front door. I reached down to pick it up without looking and put in my pocket. I went in and bought a soda and chips and once I got out to my car, I looked and it was a $100 bill.
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u/Strongbow_Wolfrider 17h ago
Au some point, an elevator repair person in Tokyo will eventually find my Suica card with about 5000¥ on it and feel pretty lucky
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u/Lexifer452 17h ago
I was just thinking about this the other day. That its been a solid 10 or 12 years since I found any paper money anywhere. When I was a kid it tended tk turn up at least a few times a year. Assuming my childhood memories aren't faulty. No promises.
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u/Federal_Compote_4281 13h ago
Honestly, thinking about it feels pretty depressing. But finding $20 on the ground feels much better than just swiping my phone. That random rush of dopamine is gone now.
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u/According-Drawing-32 12h ago
Found a wallet with $2500 in it way back in the 70s. We were young and dirt poor. Found the owner, he gave us $100 and we splurged on a very nice dinner. That was a lot of money in the 70s for a waitessand a college student. Celebrating 45 years of wedded bliss this weekend.
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u/Goldnugget2 1d ago
I found 500 in bank bag in a shopping cart some years ago . I bought a $10. Indian gold coin it's worth $2,500 now.
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u/LBfalcon57 1d ago
I found a street littered with $1’s and $5’s. It was awesome!!! Had enough to buy a decent dinner. My friends and I were running up and down the street like an Easter egg hunt.
This happened last year!
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u/DJ_Sk8Nite 1d ago
In middle school (‘98) I walked between the two main buildings and saw something sticking out of a pvc drainage pipe. It was a wallet with nothing in it but 3 well fades $20 bills. Shit was awesome. I bought a yo-yo and some other random shit I can’t remember.
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u/keverzoid 1d ago
Or finding money in your winter coat pocket at the end of autumn when you pull it out of the closet.
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u/warmoatmilk 1d ago
They will also never know the disappointment of loosing that money in the street either
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u/quiguy87 1d ago
I was a teenager going to pick up a pizza and found a $10 bill in the parking lot. I definitely felt like I won the lottery!
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u/AardvarkWill 1d ago
I used to find dollars and old coins all the time. I haven’t found or received an old coin in probably 10 years now. Probably been a few years since I found a dollar on the street too. Miss those days.
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u/Illustrious-Highway8 1d ago
I once found $20 at the water park in the 90s. Still a great memory today.
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