found money

Found money 2023: Counting it.

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As regular readers know, I’m always on the lookout for lost change. All year long I save what I find, and the following January I count the found money, round up the total and donate the funds to a food charity.

This wound up being a decent year. In addition to the specie, I found a $10 bill and DF contributed $8 from his occasional survey-taking with the Nielsen* Company. His theory is that as a retiree, he isn’t looking for work. But occasionally work looks for him, in the form of surveys. Therefore, it is “found” money.

Whatever works. I just want to plump up the total, because it’s getting really scary out there, food-wise. As all of you already know. 

For years I’ve donated the found money to Feeding America or to the Food Bank of Alaska. More recently I’ve been sending the dough to the church I grew up in. That’s because the Fairton United Methodist Church, like so many other houses of worship, is making food baskets for locals who have more month than money.

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Unclaimed funds: Look for them!

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Recently an acquaintance was contacted by a company that specializes in finding unclaimed property. If she would authorize them to act in her name, they’d make sure she got the money – minus their 10 percent finder’s fee. She wondered if this were legit or some kind of scam.

Apparently there’s some kind of software that matches unclaimed funds to last known addresses. If even half the folks contacted respond with, “Sure, go ahead,” that company stands to make a lot of money.

But why give it away without at least trying to get it yourself?

In about 60 seconds I was able to search online and tell her that yes, the state is holding a bunch of money for you. And while I was in there, I learned that both DF and I were also owed some unclaimed funds.

Not a lot of money: just $19.71. But as someone who picks up found coins, the chance to get almost 20 unexpected bucks sounded pretty good. And as you can see from the illustration above, that money is now in my bank account instead of the state of Washington’s.

Not sure how much DF will be getting, because he’s still waiting for the results. However, the acquaintance was owed more than two grand. If that company hadn’t reached out, all three of us would still be owed money. But this way we get to keep it instead of forking over a 10 percent fee.

You, too, might be owed money – so why not look for it? Here’s how.

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Found money in 2022.

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Longtime readers know that I save my found money all year long, keeping it in a vase that my daughter found for me in the free box of a long-ago yard sale. In January, I round up the total and donate it to the food bank. This year’s total greatly eclipsed the 2021 take: $18.04 vs. $5.88.

The found money looked like this:

  • One $5 bill
  • Three $1 bills
  • 27 quarters
  • 19 dimes
  • 13 nickels
  • 74 pennies

The greenbacks were courtesy of DF, who did a couple of quick opinion surveys for a company that, believe it or not, sent him actual cash vs. a check or a gift card. His reasoning was that he is retired and wasn’t looking for employment; therefore, it was found money.

Usually I donate to Feeding America or to the Food Bank of Alaska. This year, as in 2021, I’m going to donate to the church of my childhood. The Fairton United Methodist Church now operates a small food bank to help people in that small town.

Some people are appalled by the notion of picking money up from the ground, the floor or one of those Coinstar machines. If that’s you, then you do you. But as I noted in “Filthy lucre,” it’s not as though I carry these coins home in my mouth. Food banks are being bombarded (thanks, inflation!), so for me it’s worth the stoop and then the hand sanitizer.

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34 discarded dimes.

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Recently I waited a long time at the supermarket, staring fixedly at the front of the store as the line inched along. That’s because an optometrist once told me to focus on things 20 or 30 feet away from time to time, as an antidote to all the screen work I do.

Thus I ignored the Kindle app* on my phone and focused on the Coinstar machine. In part that was because a big green rectangle is an easy thing on which to focus. It was also in pleasurable anticipation of stopping by that machine after I checked out.

As regular readers know, I glean lost coins in stores, on sidewalks, from vending machine change-return slots and, yes, from Coinstar machines.

These machines will spit out dented or otherwise compromised specie, as well as foreign coins. I’ve also found they’ll spit out U.S. coins if they’re too light to be recognized.

Which is what had happened: The rejected-coins cup was full of what looked like dimes. No other coins; just 34 dimes, all issued between 1946 and 1964. I e-mailed my PF blogging pal J. Money**, who’s also a numismatist with a site called Coin Thrill. Turns out these dimes are so common that they’re not worth much to collectors unless they’re uncirculated.

These were circulated. Very circulated. However, their condition doesn’t matter when it comes to melt value. 

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