Kharma, Rules

Some people (my sister) have been asking me about my rules for finding change. Today I had a good example of them.

When I got to my bank's coin counting machine today I saw that there was a young man there who just had an accident and dropped a lot of coins on the floor. I helped him find others that he didn't see and gave them to him. After he was finished I asked to look at his rejects. In them was a nice 1947 silver Washington and an older pure nickel Canadian 5¢. He let me buy them.

After he left and I finished half of my coin dump (the machine filled up) I looked under the machine. There were tons of coins under there! Using some cardboard I was able to retreive most of them, easily over $8 in all denominations. I thought, "this is my best day and I didn't violate my rules, because the guy's gone and I couldn't have imagined he left that many under there."

As I walked up to the counter to turn in my slip I saw the guy who lost the coins in front of me. I had no choice. I turned over all of the coins to him. My rule is if I know who lost money I find and with a reasonable amount of effort I can return it to them I have to do so. I make an exception for pennies, since no one but cheapos like me care about them. My best day in over two years of serious coin finding was instantly wiped out!

Oh well, what comes around, goes around, so they say. On my desk when I got back to the office was a pack of crackers a co-worker saved for me. A teller at the bank also saved three Wheats for me (1937, 2 x 1941) and another tried to save two nickels for me, but they were just from the recent Westward Journey series (effort appreciated!).

Found: 3 pennies (at Burger King), 1 dime (at work), 3 quarters (at Burger King)