January 16, 2010 — When we began Abandoned Cash, our intention was always to donate the money we found over the course of the year. But deciding where the money should go was a more difficult task than we anticipated: Alzheimer's research, our local art museum, and the ELCA were all contenders. But when the January 12th earthquake hit Haiti, our decision was made. The twenty nine dollars we found was included as a portion of our donation to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. With the level of need so high, both Kate and I hope you'll consider making a donation as well. You can make a donation in any amount by visiting the website linked above, or automatically give $10 via your cellphone bill by texting the work "QUAKE" to 20222. ~Scott

December 14, 2009 — With the end of the year closing in, Kate and I have decided to set one more goal for Abandoned Cash. Originally we thought it'd be great to average a penny a day. We blew past that mark with no problems, so now we are striving to average ten times that amount ... a dime a day, for a grand total of $36.50! To hit this mark, we'll need to find at least 53 cents every day between now and New Years. As Walt Disney said, "If you can dream it, you can do it." We're dreaming big! ~Scott

December 8, 2009
A penny?
No, it's too small.
It's a dime!
~Kate

December 4, 2009
Damn button
looks like a coin
on the ground.
~Kate

October 26, 2009 — Why has the tally been going up so slowly lately, you may have been wondering. I attribute it to the Extreme Makeover: MTD Edition, the change in the bus schedule and routes. I am not making up the name to be cute ... the MTD branded the change this way. In any case, the bus I normally take now has a different route which, though it takes longer to get home, picks me up right outside my office door. Very convenient but it means that I don't walk past dozens of parking meters everyday anymore. In addition, the new bus, because it is now a campus bus, is free to everyone boarding at my stop so no change is being dropped in the rush to board. Therefore, sadly, I have found almost no abandoned cash recently. But it is not quite so dark for Abandoned Cash. Without getting into the whys and wherefores, the bus is now frequently off its schedule which makes getting home frustrating despite its convenient stop. I have therefore decided to return to using a bus that stops at my old bus stop. This means more walking for me but a predictable schedule and (hopefully) more abandoned cash. Besides, walking is good for me. ~Kate

August 30, 2009 — We experienced another first for Abandoned Cash today when walking out of the grocery store after our regular Sunday shoping trip. As we pulled the cart of groceries up to the car, I noticed acrumpled green piece of paper tumbling in the wind down the drive. Our first dollar bill! Then as I instinctively scanned the rest of the parking lot, another came into view a few cars down on the other side of the row. Two bills is cause for a huge Abandoned Cash celebration! ~Scott

July 12, 2009 — When I saw the shiny golden disc I thought it was an arcade token, which would have made me plenty happy. But when I pulled it out of the reject tray of the CoinStar machine, it immediately became evident that we had a new first for Abandoned Cash: our first dollar coin! I've never been so excited to see a portrait of John Tyler. ~Scott

June 18, 2009 — The rules for Abandoned Cash are pretty strict. One of the primary tenets, in fact, is that the cash we find must be spendable in the course of our every day lives. No trading it in at the bank is allowed. In short, it must be legal American currency. That rule didn’t dampen my excitement, however, when on a recent vacation to Mexico I saw a little 10 centavo coin gleaming on the sidewalk in Playa del Carmen. Sure it doesn’t count towards our total (it is worth less than a penny in any case), but abandoned cash is abandoned cash! Kate’s brother Hans, on the other hand, did take a little bit of the wind out of my sails when he found a five peso coin (about $3.50 US) just a few minutes later. If there is one thing I've learned over the course of this experiment thus far, it is all about being in the right place at the right time! ~Scott

May 20, 2009 — I was standing in line at Dunn Bros. Coffee pouring my change purse into my hand. I wanted the fruit-yogurt-granola cup, which I knew was somewhere around $4. With a handful of quarters and golden dollars, one quarter slipped through my fingers. It rolled past the seven or eight people in line and hit the heal of the person at the counter. I skipped over to pick it up. While I was fumbling on the floor, I noticed a dime half-way under the counter. I didn’t want to grope around the feet of the woman at the register but I didn’t want to pass it up either. I returned to my place in line and waited patiently to get to the register, trying to look as disinterested as possible. To avoid being obvious, I juggled my wallet and coins and “accidentally” dropped my change purse next to the dime. I discretely picked up the dime as I retrieved my change purse. I think the woman behind me was exasperated that I couldn’t manage to hold on to anything but I did get the dime! ~Kate

May 14, 2009 — With the recession in full swing, we are apparently abandoning bills for our loose change. I think that is a positive turn of events for abandoned cash. With more coins flowing through peoples' hands, it is more likely for coins to be dropped. And since we don't value coins as much as their equivalent in bills, I expect to find more of them abandoned. ~Kate

April 30, 2009 — The lost change economy seems to be weakening. Take for example our recent trip to Minneapolis: after five days of wandering around the city, we netted a total of 11 cents. A single dime and a single penny were all we were able to find, even though our time was spent in locations we assumed would be rich with finds. So are people dropping less, are they being more diligent in picking their dropped change up, or are our finding skills fading? While these are questions without answers (at the moment), I can be sure that both Kate and I are going to be extra diligent in keeping our eyes to the ground as we walk around town. If abandoned cash is becoming harder to find, we surely need to step up our efforts. ~Scott

March 10, 2009 — I felt like someone was playing a joke on me today. I walked into a stall in women's bathroom in the Architecture Building on campus and what do I see? A bright shiny dime. No, it wasn't on the bathroom floor. It was in the toilet bowl. It was just sitting there waiting to be flushed out of circulation. I had a moment of indecision as I stood frozen in the stall doorway. Do I want that dime enough to reach into the (this is important) clean toilet bowl? After a few moments of hesitation, I decided, yes, I do want that dime that much. I closed the stall door so I wouldn't be surprised by someone while I had my hand in toilet water and I reached in and picked it up. I then washed both my hands and the dime thoroghly. In this recession every dime counts. ~Kate

March 2, 2009 — There is nothing that makes one feel more foolish than running up to a spot on the ground, pulling off your glove and reaching down to pick up...a piece of gum or a candy wrapper or washer. I have developed a method of quickly sidling up to a potential cash find (lest someone else spot my potential prize) while discretely pulling off my gloves and staring at the ground so that I avoid the embarrassing situation of reaching for old gum on the sidewalk. I have become reasonably good at this but I still get caught up in the moment and forget myself. A couple of weekends ago Scott and I went to Clinton, Illinois. When we were stopped at a stoplight I saw a penny in a puddle in the lane next to us. I leaped out of the car to retrieve it only to find that it was not a penny. It was a penny-like object. It was the same size and thickness as a penny, though obviously not copper. We tried our best to make it a penny (perhaps a steel penny that had its faces worn away?) but in the end we had to admit that it is only a penny-like object. Scott stowed it away in his desk drawer with his other odd, non-cash finds and we, unfortunately, didn't add it to our total. ~Kate

February 9, 2009 — This weekend we tested a theory Kate has been formulating. She hypothesized that the reason the "other" money finding bloggers mentioned in a post a while back have significantly higher tallies than we do is due to their location in larger cities. So this weekend we spent two days in Chicago, and kept our eyes to the ground as we normally do. By the time we got in the car towards home, we had added 20 coins to the total. This seems to verify Kate's suspicions ... but of course we'll diligently continue our quest to answer such questions. ~Scott

January 27, 2009 — Notwithstanding the dime Scott found yesterday, it has been a very dry, or should I say poor, couple of weeks for Abandoned Cash. Chalk it up to bad weather and snowy sidewalks, it is frustrating to be staring at the ground whenever I walk outdoors and never see a single penny. It is even more maddening when I look at a similar project blogged by a family on Staten Island, The Changepot. They are already up to $53.61! Of course, they have four sets of eyes and two of those sets are much closer to the ground than mine and Scott’s. Plus, they live in a more populated area than we do — people drop more change on city sidewalks than in cornfields.

Scott and I are not unique in our project, it appears. I have found a number of other folks collecting change and recording it online. The Changepot is definately in the lead but these other bloggers have found an average of $3.61 this year (Rainy Day Fund, Found Money, Cheap, Green and Happy, and The Found Money Jar). I take comfort in the fact that we are not all operating under the same rules, and our rules are the most restrictive. We only count cash that has been abandoned, not cans that are redeemed for money, not change that someone has given us because they don’t want to deal with it, not even foreign currency (not that we find much of it here in the cornfields but, hey, we might leave sometime!). All the same, I wish our total was higher. ~Kate

January 21, 2009 — A quick note to all our RSS readers: the address for our feed has changed. Although the old feed should be automatically forwarding to the new address, it would probably be a good idea for you to re-subscribe using the new address. The button provided on the site is up to date, or you can just click this link for the new feed. Thanks for reading! ~Scott

January 10, 2009 — Last night Scott and I conducted a covert treasure hunting operation. While I can't reveal the details, I can say that Scott had a theory about a site that would be prime for abandonded cash. And how right he was! We collected 63 cents in two passes through this top secret site. I think we will be visiting more places like this in the future. ~Kate

January 3, 2009 — Here we are only three days into 2009, and the project is already in the black. Our goal for the year is to see if we can find an average of one penny a day, and after today’s find of a seven cents we’re off to a screaming start! The entire find, consisting of two pennies and one nickel, was pulled from the reject tray of a coin counting machine at our local grocery store. This is somewhere we often find change, and we’ll be sure to keep an eagle eye out for more of these machines as the year progresses.

And if we are successful enough to have an end of the year party, the guys at Gaijin Games are more than welcome to attend. Thanks for the kind words, fellas. You'll just have to cover air fare from California to central Illinois. The pizza will be our treat. ~Scott

January 1, 2009 — Welcome to the beginning of our experiment. In mid-2008 Kate and I went on a short vacation with some friends. During the course of this trip, a competition ensued. The couple who could find the most money on the ground by the time we returned home was to be declared the “winner.”

Looking for change on the ground is something I’ve done since childhood. I am a treasure hunter at heart, and this little vacation time fun really struck a nerve with both Kate and myself. In retrospect, this was the beginnings of a family tradition and even though we didn’t realize it at the time it was to be the conception of this website. While we aren’t expecting blockbuster sums in our piggy bank on December 31st, it will be interesting to see how much change we actually find in a year. Thanks for visiting! ~Scott