I once found a $100 bill by the curb on a rundown street that was about half abandoned buildings. I assumed it had been dropped by a drug dealer because not a lot of other people in that neighborhood had $100 bills in quantities such that they could cascade out of their pockets without notice. And there weren’t a lot of people hanging out in that particular area that weren’t up to something. But I didn’t keep it so much as spend it. I’m not much of a stuff collector, and I early learned that cool rocks and shells and such belong where they are and I take pictures, not souvenirs.

My father was a farmer. He, on rare occasion over decades of farming, turned up something interesting in the act of turning the soil (e.g. a mastodon tooth and some decomposing metal antiques.)