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Money From Out Of The Blue (Cash Found Or Unexpectedly Received)

Recently I was bemoaning the fact I had no money, and wished out loud for some to turn up.

I don't know if it was the next day or the day after that when I came across £15, but I didn't pick it up, even after deliberately stepping on it and tying my shoelace as someone passed by so they wouldn't see it. I passed the money on the way back from my walk, but it still didn't feel right to pick it up, I can't explain why.

The next morning at 0530 walking the dog, I saw £20 on someones windscreen, on their driveway, which I also left. Yeah it was on the driveway, but it was only four steps away from my pocket. :)

In the summer I found three one pound coins in the park. I was with my daughter, and pointed one out to her, I picked it up and then I saw another nearby, and then another, but I didn't notice them altogether. She made a profit that day, as I already said she could keep the first one. :lol:

We both said a thank you out loud, just as people suggest in the forum.
 
The 'coin fairies' frequently leave their droppings in gutters and on pavements outside banks and retail outlets of various kinds. Some people find it worthwhile to trawl the streets with a metal detector!
 
I read it in the paper so it must be true

Brits find £186m loose change on streets
Metro (free newspaper)
Thursday, January 24, 2008

Coining it: we each pick up £4 in loose change Streets might not be paved with gold - but apparently they are with loose change.

The average person finds nearly £4 in loose change on the street each year, a survey claims.

That adds up to Britons collectively picking up £186 million on an annual basis.

People find an average of £3.80 each on the pavement every year, while two per cent of people find more than £50, according to financial website Fool.co.uk.

Six out of 10 people would pick up a penny if they saw it in the street, but nine per cent would not pick up anything less than 10p, while seven per cent would not pick up less than £1.

The majority of people keep the money they find, but 21 per cent of those questioned said they would hand it in, while 35 per cent of women said they would donate any notes they found to charity.

The most common place to find cash is on the pavement, but 8 per cent of people admitted they actively looked for money down the back of sofas, while 9 per cent said they always checked the change slot of vending machines and pay phones and one per cent searched the ground around parking meters looking for dropped coins.

Londoners are the least likely to bother picking up a penny that someone else had dropped at just 41 per cent, while those in Yorkshire and Humberside were most likely to at 70 per cent.
 
In the early eighties I was working on a government scheme designed to massage the dole figures, for a pittance. My girlfriend lived in London and every other week I'd travel down to see her by train, a substantial investment on my part.
One Friday evening after work I made my way to the station ticket window and gave the chap £20, the return fair to the capital being £18 so far as I recall. Instead of giving me £2 change he gave me £18 and my ticket. I looked at the price to see whether I'd become confused with the transaction and the ticket seller, seeing me waiting, assumed he hadn't given me my change and offered another £18 with apologies.

By this point I began to wonder if I'd fallen into a British Rail version of Alice in Wonderland and only when my friend (who worked on the same scheme and also had a London based girlfriend) muttered, 'you lucky b*****d' from the other side of the barrier was I sure a windfall had come my way.
If the same happened now I would certainly inform the ticket seller of his error but as it doubled my wage that week it was a case of needs must.
 
I used to find change in my paockets, when i was at school, one rather profitable day I had £20 in 50p pieces, £1 an £2 coins, I sat on my own at the back of every class I was in (wasn't very sociable) leave my coat on te back of the chair, and whn I put my coat on, it felt a lot heavier than normal and in the inside pocket was £20 in change
 
It finally happened to me last Friday. My kids had gone downtown with a friend and I was driving them back home. We got about a block away from home when I felt something icy cold going down my back. I looked around at the kids who were on the opposite side of the car from me. Whatever was going down my back then slid into the waistband of my jeans. :shock: By now we were in the driveway and I jumped out of the car and started shaking my leg. A dime dropped out of my pant leg, but I felt something in my shoe. My kids were laughing like anything at me standing in the driveway shaking my leg like a wet dog (I'm sure the neighbors enjoyed it also). :D When we got inside, I took off my shoe and found a quarter.

Drat, I didn't remember to say "thank you". I could really use some more loose change, too....
 
The best place to find change is on the floor around the bar in a night club, dark + drunk people= lots of lost money. I used to work in a Rock Club and the first thing all the staff did as soon as the house lights came on was search the floor for money. Usual haul was £3-4 a night, although one lucky member of staff found £30 rolled up on the dance floor. Even last time I was there and mentioned it, I easily found £1.20 with a cursory glance. It kinda made up for the shite wages and lack of tips.
 
We used to have a local night club next to a beach. Every Saturday and Sunday morning my mate would be down there on the sand with his metal detector - made quite a haul out of it too.
 
My first weekend job was cleaning in a pub. Sunday mornings used to bring in quite a haul of dropped pound coins from tipsy punters.

Many years ago, 1985 I think, when I was embarking on my first foreign holiday I was wondering where to get the money from to pay for my passport. I was walking home from school and planning my budget very carefully because £30 (I think that was the cost) was a lot of money then.

As I neared my house I looked up at the sky and thought, somewhat ironically "Come on God. Help me out please! I don't ask for much..." and then looked back down and across my path blew a scrunched up piece of brown paper. I was stunned because I knew exactly what it was, and low and behold 2 very screwed up tenners came to rest at my feet.

There was no one around and had there been I would have asked them to check their pockets as I've always firmly believed what goes around comes around.

After scooping them up and checking they were real I gave a little "Thanks mate!" to the skies and carried on my way.

I am now extremely honest whenever I'm over chanrged or anything.

I keep asking for help to clear my overdraft but I don't think a suitcase full of money could be so easily wafted in my way!!
 
Today I received a cheque for a few hundred quid from HM Customs and Revenue. But I don't know why - I wasn't expecting anything.

The envelope was addressed to me, the cheque had my name on, but there was no covering letter (or anything else) in the envelope.

Well, while I ponder about it, the money is 'just resting' in my account! :D
 
shillings

it is worth noting that the old shilling pieces were exactly the same size and weight as the new 10p pieces currently in circulation. You could have been given one in your change as a 10p.

The best type of money-find is the £5 or £10 in the pocket of the jeans that have sat on the bedroom floor for 2 weeks! yoink! :roll:
 
Especially if they're not your jeans. :lol:
 
Re: shillings

elprincipeoso said:
it is worth noting that the old shilling pieces were exactly the same size and weight as the new 10p pieces currently in circulation. You could have been given one in your change as a 10p.

Are to referring to when the money changed a shilling and two shilling coins were still legal tender as 5 and 10p?
They stopped being so when the size of 5 and 10ps changed about 15 years ago.
 
Many years ago I received a cheque for £180 from a local bookmaker, made out to me in detail. I don't bet and have never used the shop.
 
colpepper1 said:
Many years ago I received a cheque for £180 from a local bookmaker, made out to me in detail. I don't bet and have never used the shop.

Someone had bet £1,000 that you'd cash it! :)
 
I got the money fairy again. I had a friend come to visit and for a laugh, we had a scramble up by the castle walls. On the way down, right at the bottom, I found a tenner! Just about enough for a round at a Wig and Mitre...
 
A year or so ago I was putting on a pair of trainers to go and play a game of squash with a friend. There was an obstruction in one of the trainers which made it very uncomfortable so I took it off and shook it out.

Out dropped a £2 coin and a small key that I did not recognise.

I have no idea how either item got into the shoe. The trainers had been in the bottom of my wardrobe for a couple of weeks and I had never taken them off outside my home as they were fairly new and had only been used to play squash.

The key was the cheap small travel case padlock type and I do not own any such padlock. Later that day, after the game, I checked all my other footwear for unusual gifts but found nothing.
 
Irish 1928 Half-Crown Coin

chriswsm, something similar happened to me and Mr HCN today. He had to nip outside, the rain was absolutely bucketing down, so he grabbed my long plastic mac and put it on.
When he came back he showed me what he'd found in one of the pockets. An Irish half-crown coin (note to you young 'uns: that's two shillings and sixpence, or roughly 12½p in New Money) dated 1928.
Neither of us has ever seen it before. We live in Wales. We last visited Ireland in 1986, and they'd stopped using half-crowns by then.
The last time I remember wearing that coat was in April of this year, and it certainly was not there then.
Mr HCN looked it up on t'internet. Apparently, the Republic of Ireland minted its first coins in 1928, and silver coins of this period are 75% silver.
We seem to have active tylwyth teg (fair folk) in our house. Things disappear, then turn up again, usually in bleedin' obvious places where you've looked a dozen times. Asking politely, then leaving the room for 15 minutes or so seems to work too. Maybe they had Irish cousins over for summer!
 
Binman can keep £10,000, if he finishes giant jigsaw of torn notes
Alex Berry The Guardian, Thursday December 4 2008

A binman who discovered £10,000 in torn-up bank notes has been told he can keep the cash - but must first separate all the bits of paper and assemble them back together as individual notes before he can spend any.

Graham Hill discovered the £10 and £20 notes in a bin while on his round in the city of Lincoln. For an unknown reason they had been cut or torn into small pieces.

After handing the money in to police, a six-month investigation could find no evidence that it was stolen or linked to any criminal activity.

It was returned to Hill after no one came forward to claim it.

The Bank of England has said that it will exchange the notes for new ones if they can be pieced together again.

Hill, who lives in Gainsborough, is beginning work on a painstaking but rewarding mammoth jigsaw puzzle.

Detective Constable Nick Cobb of Lincolnshire police said: "This was a very unusual case.

"Despite our inquiries, the circumstances of why and how the money came to be torn up and put in the bin remains a mystery."

The value of the notes has been estimated at £10,000. No pair of the serial numbers on each note appears to have been left intact.

"He'll have a job making some money out of it," a police spokesman said.

A Bank of England spokeswoman said: "Providing the bank notes meet the evidence requirements, then an application for reimbursement should be successful.

"In particular we look at the two serial numbers on the front of notes."

Speaking shortly after he found the money, Hill told the Lincolnshire Echo: "I was gutted when I looked in there and saw it all cut up."

The money is thought to have been discarded some time between the evening of Wednesday, May 7, and the following morning.

A binman colleague of Hill at Cory Environmental Services in Lincoln said: "I just hope he pieces enough of the notes back together to get a round of drinks in at the works Christmas do.

"It's been a while since he's had a go at a jigsaw, but hopefully he can piece some of the notes back together and get a bit of money.

"Christmas is only around the corner, so any bonus will be welcomed."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/0 ... nds-10-000
 
Australian teenagers find $100,000 – and hand it in
Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney

Two teenage brothers, fishing for bass and catfish in a secret water hole near a picturesque country town in eastern Australia, thought they’d won the lotto when they hooked a bag of money last week.

Hidden in grass just metres from the creek bank, the boys discovered a package wrapped in plastic and containing $100,000 (£53,000) in various denominations of Australian cash.

But after realising there may be something more sinister behind the stash, they decided to hand the loot in to the local police – after spending three weeks mulling over whether to keep it or not.

The teenagers contacted the police on Friday, after revealing their extraordinary find – wads of $20 and $50 notes bundled together with rubber bands – to their mother and getting some legal advice.

“We just don’t want any trouble,” one of the boys, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Lismore Northern Star newspaper. “We were sweet before the money and we’ll be sweet afterwards.”

The boys had been fishing at Tuntable Creek, a waterway near Lismore in the tropical region of far northern New South Wales on Australia's east coast. The creek runs downstream from a nearby national park and is also located near Nimbin, a small town known as the home of Australia’s hippy culture, which hosts an annual MardiGrass festival devoted to promoting the use of cannabis.

The region had recently been affected by major flooding so the bundle may have come from any number of streams in the area, known as the Northern Rivers region.

Police searched the Tuntable Creek area thoroughly but failed to uncover any more cash or clues as to where it may have come from. Inspector Greg Moore said that officers were investigating whether the discovery was crime-related.

"That's obviously one line of inquiry we're looking at," he said. "It could be proceeds of ill-gotten gains but at this stage we're certainly keeping an open mind."

Inspector Moore said that if nobody came forward with a legitimate reason for claiming the money, the boys might be able to claim it, otherwise it could go towards police internal revenue.

The mother of the teenagers admitted that she wrestled with the idea of keeping the cash for the family, but did not want anything to do with “dirty money”. “It would be nice to have some extra money, but not if it’s going to upset our lives,” she said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 842242.ece
 
The other day I was off for a jog - although having seen Eddie Izzard run X amount of marathons and still look paunchy I dunno why I bother - and bothe my sweaters were in the wash.

Got an old one I hadn't worn for ages and lo and behold £5 was in the pocket! Bingo!

Best thing is it was a sweater my ex-girlfriend was fond of, got it back after our split and can't remember wearing it since so chances are it was her money! :lol:
 
Back home in Malta we have quite a bit of folklore related to the "Hares" (read haah-res), a ghost who resides especially in old houses and appears as a Turk with a turban. It can dislike people, and then it's trouble - it will really scare them or try to lure them somewhere bad.If it likes the person however it will leave money hidden somewhere in the house, usually in some container like a drawer or a cupboard. The spot will keep getting refilled no matter how much you take. The only condition is to keep your mouth shut. If you as much as tell anybody about the money or the "Hares", then the money will stop flowing and you never know, the ghost might suddenly become annoyed.

My father tells a story about how when he was a child he found quite a bit of money hidden somewhere at home. He asked his mother about it but she said that she knew nothing about it. It seems that this money kept being replaced for a while until they eventually moved out. I don't know if the grandmother really did know nothing. It seems however that they bought themselves quite a few treats with it, and my grandmother certainly wasn't one to buy many treats in those impoverished, post-colonial days.

There are some other more sinister stories about the "hares" trying to lure little girls and such, but they're outside the topic.
 
money finding conundrum

Who do you thank when you find a 10 Euro note in a Suffolk town, the local money faeries or their continental cousins? :lol: Haven't found any money for a while, made a nice change.
 
Yesterday I was waiting for a bus, my eyes fixed mostly up the road to see if it was coming. But a man near me clearly had his eyes on the road, as he stepped out and picked up a £2 coin!

But how about this:


Gold hoard found in French cellar

A French couple have found a hoard of gold coins worth at least 100,000 euros (£89,000; $140,000) in the cellar of their home in the town of Millau.
They were working on their drains when they dug up the 34 coins in a little clay pot, French media said.

The coins date from 1595 to the French Revolution, which began in 1789, said a local coin expert who evaluated them.
The most valuable is a double louis from 1640, during the reign of Louis XIII, worth 6,500 euros.

The coin expert, Marc Aigouy, told AFP news agency that he offered either to buy the coins from the couple or to organise an auction on their behalf.
He said if American and Japanese buyers participated, the coins could fetch at least 100,000 euros.
Mr Aigouy said the couple wish to remain anonymous but they live on rue Droite, an old Roman road which is the oldest street in Millau, in southern France.

Under French law, the couple are allowed to keep the treasure because it was found on their own property, Mr Aigouy said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14080228
 
I had a letter from the DWP yesterday to say that I'd be getting a winter fuel payment of £200. Which was nice, as I didn't get one last year! (it seems that during the'qualifying period' in 2010 I hadn't yet started drawing my state pension.)

The £200 should be paid to my bank account by Christmas. And as it happens, I will also get two pension payments in December as well. My pension is paid every 4 weeks, and the due dates are the 2nd and the 30th of December! So my bank account should be quite healthy next month! :D
 
Happy Christmas Rynner!

:D

I take my poor old disabled Mum supermarket shopping on Wednesdays, and I was foraging in my purse for a quid each for our trolleys. Couldn't find a quid amongst the many two and five pences, but I did find a ten cent, fifty cent and an odd almost quid sized coin with EUROCOIN LONDON written on it (anyone know what that is?).

I guess they've been in my purse a while and I'd just stopped noticing them. Can't think how any of them got there though!
 
Now I know where my money is mysteriously disappearing to - they must getting it from my bank account! Of course, they have to run some of it through a very Foreign Exchange first!
 
The day I found £250,000 in my bank account
Leo Benedictus woke up rich after an erroneous bank transfer - but could it last?
Leo Benedictus
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 January 2012 20.29 GMT

You may struggle to believe this. Even while it was happening to me, I struggled too. One morning before Christmas, I checked my online bank account and noticed – although that seems too mild a word for it – that someone had just given me a quarter of a million pounds.

A woman with an unfamiliar name (which it feels unfair to mention) had, without warning, paid £250,000 into my current account. It was an exciting moment. This is not the kind of figure that a writer for the Guardian gets blasé about.

I assumed there was a glitch in the website; but when I logged off and on again, the money was still there. An hour later: still there. It had been deposited the day before, but there was no sign of anybody looking for it. I Googled the woman, and found several people with her name, but decided that I couldn't contact them. This was very private business that I wouldn't want to spread around. (Nor can you assume you'll get an honest answer to the question: "Excuse me, is this gigantic sum of money yours?")

Besides, maybe it was my money now? If £10 notes are the property of the bearer, would the same apply to all those zeroes? Should I put it into a high-interest account until the matter was resolved? (There didn't seem to be quite enough to run away with. Nowhere near enough if I took my wife and children, which ideally I would.) Maybe there would be a reward, ahem, for giving it back? Or might this all be some ingenious scam? It would have to be very ingenious indeed, because I couldn't work out how anyone might profit by giving me a quarter of a million pounds.

Of course there was the slim chance that this money had been given to me on purpose. I focused on that. In March I'd published a novel, so I took to wondering if some shy patron of the arts had loved it and gone frankly rather overboard. (Her shyness would be so pronounced, of course, that she'd prefer to ferret out my bank details rather than post me a cheque.) Maybe the eccentric companion of a deceased forgotten aunt was giving me my legacy? I tried strenuously to believe so as I typed an email to my bank explaining things.

Later, I rang the UK Payments Council, which oversees the payments system, in search of answers. It turned out that it is familiar with "erroneous transfers", which occur when somebody mistypes an account number or a sort code. "If that combination happens to belong to someone else, then that payment will go through to a third party," a spokewoman confirmed. "Although if they use that money, essentially they are committing theft," she warned. "No matter how much you need it or how much you want it, that money doesn't belong to you." Not even the interest? "No."

This was a blow. It was softened, however, by the news that my case was the largest that she had heard of. "I've seen it happen with £10,000 or £20,000, but you're the first in my time with a quarter of a million," she said

Days passed, and still the money didn't move. I checked continually. There was something hypnotic about the sight of my usual domestic debits splashing on the surface of that enormous balance. Between checks, I kept forgetting that the money was there, and then – perhaps when an Aston Martin drove past – remembering.

Another thought occurred to me. What if I just borrowed the money for a few hours, and gambled with it? I would return the full amount afterwards, providing I won. A friend suggested that I would be in breach of trust law, but I found it hard to believe that anyone would prosecute me if they got their money back. All I'd need would be an online betting account, an odds-on certainty and a stiff drink. I'd get £50,000 richer in five minutes if a 1-5 shot came home. If it didn't, admittedly, I'd get prison.

At last, just over a week after the money had arrived, my bank called. It was as I'd feared: I'd have to give everything back – although they needed my approval to transfer the money. (The results of saying no were not explained.) In the process of typing a sort code, the bank explained, this mysterious woman had pressed "6" when she meant "8", and lost a fortune.

I've tried to trace her since, without success. I'd like to tell her about the interesting week I had with her money. I'd also like to find out what her week had been like. Rather fraught, I'm guessing. Finally, I'd thank her for ensuring that I'll never make that same mistake – mainly because I no longer have a quarter of a million pounds.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/ja ... 0000-error
 
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