Gap Year Frolics
Before i went to Uni, I spent a year in South America, during which period I made friends with some fairly dodgy chaps. They were also very very rich. I wasn't stupid, but I probably had sampled too much of the wares that they provided, so a couple of times I agreed to help with some of their transactions (for a 1% cut of the profits.) I think I was a good candidate owing to my fairly average tourist look, maybe verging a bit on the posh side. Certainly not someone who looks like they're carrying 2.5 million US dollars in their hold-all (or the white equivalent, on the outward journey.)
Anyway, long story short, it was quite fun to do the 'Pulp Fiction' thing of getting back to the hotel and opening the suitcase and seeing all that money, just shining up at you. On the other hand it took about 2 years for my heart rate to return to normal, and I've not been to that continent since.
Life is just a series of experiences.
(Dr.Ibble, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 15:58, Reply)

When I worked in a pub
I was sent to Yate's on the scrounge for pound coins. I manage to find someone with a radio and ask if I can have some poind coins for my pub.
"I'm not sure how much we can spare, how many do you want?" she asks. "Just two bags" says I. Two minutes later a couple of bar staff plonk £4,000 in pound coins in front of me. It's a shame I meant normal money bags and I only had £40 on me. They asked me to carry the money back upstairs by way of apology.
( CowJam, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 15:57, Reply)

£40K of Dole Money
In uni hols I used to work in the Remittance Unit of a large city Post Office, sending out anything of face value (stamps, postal-orders, cash, etc) to the various branches.

One day we got a call from the Post Office of a less-salubrious local town: they'd run out of cash, it was unempolyment-benefit giro day, securicor were busy, and things were turning nasty.

So my boss grabbed forty grand and drove us there in his Sierra. As the town-centre was a pedestrian precinct, I had to walk down the high street with £40K 'hidden' in a Tescos bag.

When I got to the Post Office there was this huge queue of irrate dole-scum snaking out of the door and up the street. It was bad enough trying to push my way inside, but I got told to fuck-off by more than 1 'job seeker' as I casually tried to push in and get to the front.

Rather than shouting back, "don't worry mate I'm just trying to drop off a huge bag of cash for you lovely lot", I ended up standing at the back, waving the bag at the counter staff, winking wildly and miming the code-words "REM Unit", until they let me in the secret side door.

Robbers and Scallies: It seems they're not allowed to do this anymore. In case you have any Very Clever ideas.
(wifeb3ta, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 15:45, Reply)

lost wonga
my dad used to work for a big firm in the city and one day on the train back home he fell asleep. got to the station woke up and got off leaving his breifcase, with a cheque for 140 million pounds indide it, on the train. the cheque was for a take over of a smaller company and was for show purposes but still was to be cashed. luckily enough some nice samaritan returned it to him within the hour. and dads job was saved
(BigBobbyh, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 15:41, Reply)

Cash in hand
One evening me and a friend stumble back to a mate's house, having to carry him home, after what could be known as a 'heavy night.'

As we get into his dad's new, obviously well minted, apartment we sit and play halo on a 50inch plasma while he's away on 'business'.

This mate of mine goes "ohh yeah, look at this." Drunkardly running up the stairs a few seconds later he returns with a big envelope full of £50 notes.

"I found my dad's stash." Him being in quite a comical mood grabs a handfull and throws it across the living room. No joke, he threw money at us.

After a lot of counting and ore over the most money I've ever seen in cash, we realise our mate's nodded off on the sofa. We both looked at each other, sitting in the plush apartment, with 20 grand scattered across the floor.

I only pocketed £100, but from this day on wonder of how I convinced my other mate not to run out of the apartment with a few thou in his pockets.

We always knew Ben's dad was a bit of a 'dodgy dealer.'
(richcollins, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 15:29, Reply)

pah
This is the stupidest QOTW, ever.


ps. i have 50p in my knickers.
(jennymnemonic, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 15:18, Reply)

Cash. Bags of it
My first summer job was repairing video games and slot machines in an amusement arcade and every week we had to help load the back of the boss's Merc with the takings. Bags and bags of coins and notes.

They eventually got shut down when the tax man discovered that they should have been declaring at least 20 million a year, so I reckon we were stuffing half a million in cash in the boot of that car every week. It did drive away scaping on the suspension I seem to remember...
(plankton, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 14:53, Reply)

cash money
1/ c24k in a carrier bag to pay for something on someone elses behalf. (long time ago)

2/ 12k in an envelope to pay builder. (long time ago)

3/ 8k in a carrier bag to buy a number of things. (long time ago)

4/ 6k in a duffle bag to buy 3 things in particular (long time ago)

5/ 2k cash in a drawer, at the mo.

6/ £800 in me wallop, at the mo.


I have seen 80k in a shoe box. was tempted. very tempted.
(sham-il-eer-tak-tak noes better but still can't give a fuck at, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 14:21, Reply)

Frummers in Hendon
Not me, just what I witnessed...

I was at Middlesex Uni in Hendon 10 years ago. Being a skint student I was up to my weekly cashpoint limit so I had to go to the bank to cash a cheque. As I stood in the queue, a large Hassidic Jewish bloke came in (the full monty with beard & black hat & ringlets & long frock coat, etc) accompanied by wife & tall teenage son (son looked just like dad but without the beard). My turn came so I went up to the counter & started to write out my pathetic cheque for "Cash fifteen pounds only". The next window became free & the three of them trooped up, dad with beaming smile on his face. He nudged son who reached into his right inside pocket & pulled out the biggest wad I have seen. It must have been 4 inches thick. He just about squeezed it into the drawer & the slightly suprised teller took it out of her side. Then he went to left inside pocket & took out another one. Two more followed from his outside pockets. I had begun to twitch at the first one, but now I was visibly trembling. I overheard the teller confirm the amount of £350,000 & I nearly fainted.

You would hire a Securicor van for less & yet here they were having strolled through Hendon with 350 grand in son's pockets.

It took me nearly an hour back in the canteen to stop shaking.

(I kept an eye out ever afterwards to roll the bastards, but I never saw them again ;0(
( Dunks, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 14:11, Reply)

Hmm...
£125 after winning multiple jackpots on a fruit machine after work. Problem being it was after work, at around 1am. And I still had a 20 minute walk home on my hands. I sounded like some reindeer with all that gold jingling in my pockets.

£1,200 cheque, which was gona be used to pay for a car. Got mugged for it. Despite me telling him he couldn't cash it in, he still insisted in taking it from me... so I went back home and wrote another. Idiot.

£2,000 in 'small change' from the post office (for work). Was a nice amount to be driving around with, although it did weigh down my side of the car, 2grand in all manner of coins isnt exactly light. Ground down my driver side rear wing, it's like an expensive form of low-riding.
( Insane Maniac musically inclined (about 45°), Fri 23 Jun 2006, 13:58, Reply)

£26,000
I had to pay my builder in CASH for the work he did on our new extension. This was the final payment. The day I had to collect it was in the middle of me doing Jury Service. I turned up in the lunchbreak of our trial, as arranged, at the bank in a street in a town unknown to me, and collected the cash. I returned nervously to the courthouse (in Reading) and had to submit myself to a search as they had tightened security there, since our case was one about fraud and bribery. The policeman found the package and asked what it was. He looked inside and saw the huge wedge and summonsed his mates. For some reason, finding a juror on a bribary and fraud case, with £26k in an envelope seemed suspicious to them. Fortunately, they phoned the bank who confirmed they6 had given me the cash and that it was from my approved loan for the building work. I was so very nearly in deep, deep shite.
( Zaphod's Wombat - Never did quite get the hang of, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 13:38, Reply)

£3500
To buy a car - if felt like the king when i arrived to view and pay up.
Then i discover that i have been done up like a kipper and there were so many faults with the car that it very nearly killed me when the prop shaft exited the floor of the car and entered the seating area while i was flying down the motorway. Luckily for me the AA helped finally kill the car by towing it without disconnecting the remains of the prop shaft - shredding the remains of the gear stick tunnel.
Suffice to say, the lovely Nigerian gent who sold me the car was never at his address again - the family that did live there were quite nice but they had been broken into recently... .
(dkintheuk, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 13:23, Reply)

fluffy elephants
that story makes me feel both violated and sad, that is so cruel to a six-year old capable of even desiring a hi-fi. Try to find a government-funded nursing home with bad reports and staff with large prison tattoos...

On the subject, i just got reminded of the day my dad sold a car - my brother and I, both small children, played british bulldog with rolls of twenties, totalling about £7k. Waay better than rolling in it, i reckon.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 13:18, Reply)

Mum didn't like Banks...
So, when she died, she'd already planned ahead and left me 'messages' around the house where'd she's stashed the savings - hidden in old clothes, in plant pots, etc.

17 Grand in £1000 bundles of 20's. i kept them in a Morrisons carrier... in the boot of the car. Thank god i've now spent it... :(
(TheManofScience, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 12:55, Reply)

Pachinko
Not me, but a friend who lived out in Japan at the same time as me, decided to go to a pachinko parlour with some of her mates. A panchinko parlour is filled with machines that are kind of a cross between a fruit machine and a pinball machine and they are filled with ball bearings.

Despite having no idea what she was doing and also having consumed one too many Asahi beers, she managed to win about £700 on a pachinko machine and stumbled haphazardly over to the prize counter to exchange her loot.

Given that it is illegal to give out cash prizes in Japan what they do instead is give you a random gift which you then take outside to the carpark where some friendly local yakuza gangsters who run the parlours will then swap your crappy gift for real yen.

Under the jealous eyes of the other pachinko players she handed over her overflowing plastic container of ball bearings and waited expectantly for whatever might appear. She was very excited when the woman from behind the counter gave her a box of chocolates - fantastic, she thought, and started greedily eating all of them, the alchol from earlier making her very hungry indeed. Given that it was quite a small box of chocolate, each suculent bit was costing her about £50.

Luckily, instead of ending up being the most expensive crappy box of chocolates ever, one of the friendly yakuza guys shooed her out into the carpark and gave her the money anyway. They let her keep the rest of the choccies (there was only a couple left by then anyway) and even gave her another box because they found her so amusing. Result!
( hanabanana, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 12:48, Reply)

Ain't life grand / £ 1,000

Well this isn't really about me carrying but still apt...

A young lad from my inbred hometown had a job in one of the local pubs.

One day, he was sent to next door to the post office to deposit some cash - £1,000 i believe.

He ran off with it, and has not been seen since. Apparently the police launched a search for him.

We hear he is now officially homeless.He was interviewed on Scotland Today a while ago about his views on his life as a tramp.

So much for trying to keep a low profile.
(heartspark, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 12:22, Reply)

Who needs currency
When you have magic beans?!
(Ghost Batty Rider, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 11:43, Reply)

Casino, casino
Used to stay in a hotel at the side of Euston Railway station. Won £2000 on a slot machine in the casino at Russell Square and walked back to the hotel with it in my pocket - too tight to get a taxi instead of a 10 minute walk.
Every time I passed someone nearly shat myself. Then I had to have it on me all week - Tuesday to Friday - 'cos a) didn't trust the hotel 'safe' and b) certainly didn't dare leave it in the room.
(The real vlad the impala, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 10:51, Reply)

Four carrier bags of renminbi
Back in the mid-90s I spent some time working at a private school that was being set up in southern China. Interesting work - a combination of mopping floors and taking corrupt officials and gangsters to karaoke parlours.

Anyway, one day my boss asks me to come to the bank with him. On the way there he tells me he's going to pick up the cash for everybody's pay for the month, plus enough to buy a piano, a minibus, and to pay some hefty bribes.

One quick trip to the safety deposit box later, he's got a big stack of HK$1000 notes. So off we go to change them into Chinese money. In what looks for all intents and purposes to be a small hole-in-the-wall shop selling flip-flops and bits of wire.

After five minutes in a back room, he returns with four flimsy carrier bags crammed with the People's Republic of China's highest denomination banknotes - worth about eight quid each at the time. Amazingly, the money-changer didn't think it was worth double-bagging the cash, despite the fact that the handles were getting steadily longer as we waited outside the shop for a taxi.

After ten minutes or so feeling decidedly uncomfortable, we took the only option that presented itself - a motorbike that had been turned into a tricycle with some dodgy welding and a couple of planks of wood as a seat. And so off we went, back to the school, two of us crammed together on a deathtrap machine trying to hold on to the bike and the bags whilst simultaneously looking nonchalant about the fact we're carrying enough cash to feed a family for a decade.
( aserinsky, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 10:46, Reply)

ah, reminded
one sale of
9g's
45 lil fellas
oz n a half
bout £700ish
( prem1um is full of life, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 10:40, Reply)

17k
I used to sell drugs. Loads of cash!
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Fri 23 Jun 2006, 10:36, Reply)

supersam11
what pub in shithole gravesend would ever sell for 100K? last i heard they´s turned the only decent place to have a laugh (The Venue) into a bathroom warehouse
( SickRik float like a camembert sting like a brie, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 10:30, Reply)

Eighty seven pounds and forty two pence
I had not long turned six and was counting up my birthday money. That year my relatives had decided not to waste their money on silly items that I would never use, and had all given me some money, which all amounted to the nice sum of £87.42.

With all this money, I decided that what I really wanted was a nice stereo. So, my mum takes me down to Commet and we have a look around.

Then I see it. The stereo that I wanted. Needed. It was tall, black and shiny. The edges were sleek and it had big shining buttons on the front. We get it and go to the counter to pay. I take my £87.42, which I had been clinging tightly to, out of my dungarees pocket but unfortunately, being only six, I was too small to reach the counter top. So my mum says she will pay. The transaction is completed nicely and I take home my brand new shiny stereo and still have £2.43 left over.

However, a week later as I'm struggling to take my sparkling stereo upstairs to my bedroom, from the living room where it had for some reason been placed when we got home, my mum stops me,
"What are you doing with that stereo?"
"I'm taking it to my bedroom."
"Why?"
"Because it's mine and I want to listen to it in my bedroom."
"Is it yours?"
"Yes I paid for it with my birthday money."
"It cost a lot of money, I don't think you did pay for it. I gave the man all that money, didn't I."

It stayed in the living room and I was most upset. My mum still claims that she paid for it, but I'll never forget what really happened,and when the time comes, I'm going to pick out the most hideous nursing home . . .
( Fluffy elephants, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 10:00, Reply)

My Own Cash
When I started with the last company I worked for, our first job was out of town, and direct deposit hadn't been set up yet. To make it worse, we were working 12 hour days, 7 days a week for a month and a half. This left me little time to run to a bank. After my second set of cheques (payroll and expense) came, I had to run to the airport to pick up some equipment that came in from the office, so I took a quick detour to cash my cheques, however as my banking cards and things were still in the hotel, I had to take cash, all $14,000 or so.
( Hosehead, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 9:59, Reply)

Nine
I was nine in 1980 when my family decided to spend the best part of a year on the big European adventure.

We paid cash for the airfare from Australia, which was thousands for the five of us. I remember it all laid out on the kitchen table.

Better still was buying the van we were to live in for the duration of the trip after a few days in London. Dad had had the money sent over and according to his trip diary we picked £3340.60 up in the city at the American Express office. It was secreted about my clothing as Dad thought a kid wouldn't get mugged.

So, I couriered a few grand to East Dulwich to the car dealership aged nine.

Dad's diary then notes that I navigated for him back to where we were staying in West Kensington.

Not bad for a nine year old kid in a new country for less than a week.
( Udderbelly A tale of four titties, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 8:55, Reply)

Rub It For Good Luck
Went to Las Vegas 2 years ago and had very rare and unusual good luck at blackjack. After 8 hours, I had $14,600, and had barely enough pocket space in my pants for all the $100 bills.

Brought the loot home to show my friends, and one woman friend started rubbing a bill across her forehead and cheeks and chanting sonnets of good fortune. Her magic must have jinxed the 'Benjamins', because it took only three months of wine, women, and song to make them all flee.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 8:28, Reply)

Goooold
I went to Ballarat once where they have a gold museum and you can get your picture taken holding a $33 000 bar of gold. Which is sort of cool. But really, I'm confused with all this money talk? Isn't the b3tan currency system mostly based on an imperial system of kittens and pron?
(rattus, Fri 23 Jun 2006, 7:26, Reply)