Bought a car that "didn't run" for $250, put some fresh gas in it and polished the paint, sold it for $2000 a week later

I bought $5 for 25¢ at a flea market

Drove grandma because she wanted a lotto ticket. She gave me $5 to go in and get it (because it was cooooold outside). Well, turns out she won $4,000, and insisted that we split it evenly because it was a team effort. Grandmothers gatta spoil, right?

Was planning on quitting a job. They told me I had to stay through the year to qualify for a bonus. So I worked a night shift until 4AM on January 1st. Turns out that if you work at all in the calendar year, you qualify for the bonus. So I got a bonus ($8500) for working 4 hours that year.

Went to a clients (I did computer repair) and he hands me a laptop and says "it's dead, if you can make it work, i'll give you $100. It is new." I look at it, push the power button and it boots. So i figure it is not connecting to the internet or something. He freaks! Cannot believe i got it working. I show him the power button on the side. He says "huh. Didn't know where it was." He takes out a wad of cash, peels off 5 $20's hands them to me and the gives me another $20 as a tip. I was in and out in under 5 minutes.

We scrapped out a machine at work. I was told that I could take parts off of it if I wanted to, since it was just being sold for steel. I took out 6 Variable Frequency Drives and sold them for over $4000 on ebay. That was a nice little bonus.

i did a sleep study over 2 weekends, just had to stay in a hospital room and basically watched netflix/read all day and just had to do a few cognitive tests on the computer. walked out with $950!

I had a summer job cleaning dorms for event groups at my college. Made 1500 bucks because the university decided to change revisions of all the textbooks they used. The school wouldn't buy back the books they sold students, so students started to throw away their textbooks because they thought they were worthless. I just sold them all on eBay to people going to the JC the next town over.

I've found $50 and $100 bills used as bookmarkers in books from Goodwill. One time, there was a $20 bill in a signed hardcover first edition of William Gibson's Virtual Light. I bought it for $2.

$20,000 for a Coca Cola commercial in which I did nothing but sit in a convertible and cheer like I was on my way to a college football game. I didn't get it all at once, but I added up the residuals over a 2 year period for tax purposes and that was the total.

"Baby"sitting my mom's friend's 14 and 11 year old. We played video games all day (with their mother's consent) and I got 150€ for like eight hours

Was first in the queue at Apple regents street waiting for the new iPhone (5 I think) sold my space for £3k

Got a scratch lottery ticket as an Xmas gift from my buddy. His family apparently handed them out to all their good friends. I won 500€. Treated him and his wife to dinner in a restaurant. So we almost blew it all in one sitting. Was nice though.

Got a 1909s penny in my change from the grocery store. Sold it on eBay for $90.00. Not a bad profit.

I worked as a barman for a few years. A neighbours niece was getting married but needed someone to run the bar at the reception set on a field. The “beer tent” was huge and I was running it with 3 others. I agreed to be paid “normal rate”. I didn’t ask for their definition but they paid me blind drunk and gave me cash in an envelope. For 10 hours work I got paid £750 and was under strict instructions from the father of the bride to “help yourself” to any left over booze. Dom Perignon crates each and we each filled our car boots with booze as a tip.

bought a small house, market boomed, sold it less than two years later for more than twice what i paid for it. lucky.

As a waitress, I served a staff party and just did well. Really connected with one man at the table and told him I was getting married in 3 months. He tipped me $1000 and told me to use it for our honeymoon. I was floored. Reacted like Dr Grant in Jurassic Park when he sees a dinosaur in the flesh for the first time. I was working three jobs at the time. We used the money to buy our wedding bands instead so we had a constant reminder that someone out there was rooting for us & the man who gave us the money heard about it and came to our wedding where he gave us $10,000. He changed our life & made it so we could afford fertility treatment. Still doesn’t feel real to this day & we hope to name our son after him if we ever get the chance.

My husband just made $1600 for letting a film crew use his truck for 4 days. They were looking for a very specific truck and it just so happened he had what they were looking for. We barely had to do anything. We met them once to go over the truck, make sure they could use it for their scenes. They called a few days later, my husband dropped the truck off and they brought it back when they were done

Bought a second-hand jacket from Good Will for $8. There was a $50 in the pocket.

Got a Nanny job at a really nice Private Golf Club Baby sat for this family in the past really nice family liked them alot went over at the house at 6 pm Kids Were instructed by parents to go to bed by 7 PM (About 4 Kids). The Parents with friends went out to dinner and to a bar (i'm assuming). Kids were really well behaved, they all went to bed at 7 PM and i just watched TV until parents came back. Parents didn't come back until 2 AM but they drunkenly paid me over 1000 dollars for "babysitting" the kids. tried to refuse that much for only 8 hours and they insisted. Contacted them the next day and told them how much they paid me and i couldn't accept it all of it that it was too much. they said no keep it its all yours! but then a few minutes later they texted me and they said okay just come next weekend and baby sit if you can and it will make up for the difference of what we paid. I said okay and went there the following weekend and they said just say here watch for a few minutes ill be right back the guy comes back and says " thanks for watching the kids for 20 Minutes Were going to head out for the rest of the year we will let you know if we need a nanny when we come back" I laughed and said okay have fun headed out to my car. There was an envelope on my car windshield sat in my car and opened the envelope and there was a letter that said "This is for babysitting and being honest with us when we were under the influence please let this money help you in any way that it can" and gifted me 5000 additional dollars so 6000 all together Cried in my car and left

Modeling in a secondary market (aka not NYC or LA). $2000 a day to be pampered, fed and told you’re pretty

I did a few tests for Stanford so they could research autism, and they gave me about 300 bucks. The tests consisted of a few MRIs, some cognitive ability tests, and others. They were pretty easy.

This morning I proctored a test for two hours. All I had to do was sit there and then collect the tests when they finished, and I got to study while there. Only made $30, but I was going to spend the two hours studying anyways so I basically got paid to do what I was going to do for free.

As a consultant in Silicon Valley in the late 90s, I had a last-minute engagement which pushed the rate up to around $400/hour. I got there and they weren't ready for me. I happened to have a yoyo I'm my bag, so I hung out in the lobby for over an hour, getting paid to play with my yoyo. It would have likely gone on longer, but an exec saw me, and asked what I was doing. I explained the situation, and I was at a desk solving their issue within 15 minutes after that.

Bought an Instagram account with 110k followers for $300 from a friend, kept posting stuff 4-5 weeks daily and one day a marketing agency offered me $2500 for it. Later I found out that it was worth more than that but for me was a great deal.

500 euros for an acting job as a waiter, I didn't have to say anything.

Three hundred bucks for my spot in line for the bathroom at McDonald's. It was new years eve.

Had something wrong with my Throat last year and went to a walk in. There was a guy there doing research on a new flu test. Got like a 4 inch q-tip shoved up my nose and got paid $75. Was in and out in maybe 10 minutes

My job while I was at school. Worked at the school pool as a lifeguard, but it was almost always empty so I could sit in the office and work or watch youtube videos and get paid £8.15 an hour for it.

I own a cell phone repair shop. About 13 years ago the Blackberry was extremely popular. They all had a trackball in the centre like an upside down computer mouse. Unfortunately, they would fail all the time and the customers were desperate to get it fixed. Other stores sold cheap knockoffs but I had an in and got original BlackBerry versions. I replaced them for $30 and it took me no more than 30 seconds. I'd buy them for under 2 bucks. I'd do at least 5 a day! Those days are gone now:(