Change spotting

Found a dime on the sidewalk today. Yesterday too. I am what you might call a change spotter. I like to look for lost coins. You can find them anywhere, but I like to check around outdoor vending machines, like where they sell newspapers. Near parking meters are good hunting spots too because people fumble for change to put in the meters.

Of course, if a greenback turns up, I won't look aside. I pick up those too. Though it might not make me rich, I might just turn up enough to put another nickel's worth of gas in the tank. It's just a hobby. But found money is fun.

I even go to our high school's football stadium after big games. Been doing that for I'll bet a decade. It's worth while. After homecoming, I'll always pick up close to ten dollars worth of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Mostly quarters. I sometimes collect double digits in quarters. That's ten or better. After last homecoming I found a ten dollar bill.

You have to get to the stadium early the next morning. I get there at the crack of dawn, even a little before. Still, there's a guy with a flashlight who collects returnable bottles at 10 cents a pop. He must come in the middle of the night. Claims to me that he makes over $100 a week. Maybe, but I don't collect cans or bottles. It's too dirty. There's a guy the locals call Weird Willie who collects pop cans too. Sometimes he comes to the stadium, but later in the morning. I've been tempted to tell him that the early bird gets the cans.

My big score was a $100 bill. I found that in a car wash once. Felt bad that somebody had to lose it. So I came back after a few hours to see if anybody posted a "Lost Money" sign there. Didn't see anything like that. So I treated the family to Red Lobster.