Head down to our little supermarket and spot on the edge of a puddle a five lira note, only slightly wet. And pick it up.
For reasons which we decide are somewhat amusing. First of all it’s a bill and not a coin. There are five lira coins but you seldom see them. But that doesn’t make it particularly valuable. The smallest Canadian note is a five dollar bill - worth approximately 160 Turkish lira. The smallest UK note is five pounds, worth about 297 lira. So our damp little acquisition is worth roughly fifteen cents - or 8p.
So why did we do it - and why did the person who dropped it not bother (assuming they noticed)? Well, you don’t have to have a memory that goes back all that far to remember a lira that was worth quite a lot more. When we were first locked down in Famagusta in March of 2020, not quite six years ago, one euro cost 7 Turkish lira. Now it would be 51. So probably our instinctive reaction to leaving a bank note lying on the road has not changed quite as quickly as the value of said bank note has.
Maybe it was dropped by a kid. Could be there’s an age factor as well. J observed years ago that students would not bother to pick up a quarter lying on the hallway floor. Staff would.
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