Chinese Man Accidentally Invents Cash Magnet, Tunes it up and Turns Pro

DaytonaRacer

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Found this 2012 article by accident while researching something else in Google. Pretty interesting. Maybe I need to buy myself some magnets, too.

Chinese Man Accidentally Invents Cash Magnet, Tunes it up and Turns Pro | RocketNews24

With the help of a powerful home-made magnet, a man in Nanjing, China, now spends his days collecting small change dropped in streets, rivers and drains, sometimes amassing enough to pay his daily living expenses.

After accidentally dropping one of his valuable farming tools into a nearby river, Aibao Cheng struck upon the idea of attaching a few magnets from a broken radio to a long pole and fishing around in the water. When he discovered that his quickly assembled device had picked up a small handful of coins after just a few minutes, he wondered what would happen with an even more powerful magnet…

Although Cheng’s device hadn’t helped him to locate his lost tool, he was so impressed by his own invention’s performance that he headed to out to the bright lights of Shanghai to buy a pair of more powerful magnets and then set to work building a larger, more durable “magnet rod” to fish around in the mud with.

Costing around 80 US dollars each, the magnets were far from cheap, but Cheng was keen to see what else he could discover sitting at the bottom of the shallow water. Sure enough, his mini investment paid off, and he soon found himself scooping up coins from all over town, lining his pockets with (hopefully cleaned) cash discovered in rivers, public toilets and swamps.

Now a full-time magnet man, Cheng says that he can pick up as many as 600 forgotten coins on a good day, making an average of 30,000 Chinese Yuan (US$4,800) a year. It just goes to show, those pennies really do add up!

Excuse us while we start rummaging down the side of the sofa…
 

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Terry Soloman

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Can you imagine getting permission to metal detect in China?!
 

ARC

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Believe me when I say...

That guy did not invent it. heh

And if U.S. coins were magnetic I would have been wealthy by age 20 :P
 

Tom_in_CA

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Can you imagine getting permission to metal detect in China?!

Who says you can't detect there ? An md'ing buddy of mine married a Chinese girl. An emigrant who had moved here as a teen, but still has lots of family in China. He's looked into it , because they'll no doubt fly there from time to time to see family. And he's found nothing that says you can't. Is he missing something ?
 

GA_Boy

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If I lived there I would toss my magnets into Wishing wells. :laughing7:
Marvin
 

cudamark

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Fishing coins out of public toilets? Man, that's really hard core!
 

jeffrey1215

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lol, you will not get permission to metal detect in China except you work some mining Company. If you find anything like Ancient Coin or valuable stuff and gold, you have to return to local government office. Unless you want to be fined or go into jail. Once you find any high-value stuff, and return to local government, they will give you a silk banner as praise. lol
 

foiler

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And, since toilet paper is not available in public toilets there, those silk banners will come in handy.
 

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