I’ll make certain to put this in good use!

Tom Sawyers last blog post..The Big 3 Are Bailing Themselves Out

There’s so much going on in this story. It’s like a juicy morsel that you don’t quite know where to wade in first and start biting. But here I go…

Okay, so the first thing that struck me after reading the comments is the bit about $1000 bills no longer being in print. So I had to make a brief detour to research that angle and discovered some links which contain useful background info:
tinyurl dot com/2lt5xh
tinyurl dot com/6aregv
tinyurl dot com/55dhlz
tinyurl dot com/2kb2yz

Turns out that $1,000 bills were last printed in 1945 and in 1969 they were officially taken out of circulation. They are still legal tender but as the Federal Reserve Banks receives them, they are destroyed. This means that any surviving $1,000 bills are actually worth more than their face value due to the value to collectors. This other value is known as the numismatic value.

Knowing this background information allows one to evaluate this story and deduce that the person who claimed the money highly likely told a lie. She most likely did not receive 97 $1,000 bills as payment for her house and belongings from anyone, although there is a small outside chance that she did. So there remains an unsolved mystery about this story. How did the woman actually come by that amount of cash? We may never know unless she starts spending it or selling it to collectors.

These bills were taken out of circulation to combat organised crime.

If I found a bag containing a large amount of money, I’d take it home and make discreet inquiries to see if I could trace the owner. I would not go to the cops with the bag of money because I don’t trust them to do the right thing. I perceive them as a high risk of making some bureaucratic blunder. Also I don’t want to run the risk of being arrested by them, which is a possibility even though I am coming forward with evidence. I just don’t trust cops.

If I could not trace the owner, I would not try to redeem any of it or change any of it at a bank or buy anything at a shop with them. I also would not be calling any reporters. I’d keep my mouth shut and make discreet inquiries with dealers to ascertain the numismatic value. If it was worth something, I might try auctioning off a single $1,000 note on eBay and see what I get for it. If that worked, I’d auction every note off individually and set as a reserve value, the moving average of each winning bid to maximise my return.

I would spend and invest the money I got from auctioning the notes off. And every night I’d pray to God that my door doesn’t get kicked in at 2AM by the DEA or FBI in some kind of sting operation.

Richard Cattos last blog post..Uniforum SA’s non benign rule of the co.za SLD

tynas last blog post..Do What You Love and Get Paid for It!

I will be honest. I would hope nobody ever claimed it! What is the law’s statute of limitation for keeping found money if it is not claimed, and what is the statute of limitation for your Christianity to stay in tact, when keeping found money, if nobody claims it within the law’s time frame???