History Main / HearMeTheMoney

* In ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'', the Auditors of Reality leave a rather unusual payment when the commission the Assassin's Guild to off the eponymous holiday figure: blank discs of pure gold. The head of the guild bounces one on his desk, and the sound and bounce of the "coin" confirm its composition for him.

* During AustinPowers's final confrontation with Dr. Evil in the first film, in a deleted scene, Number 2 attempts to bribe Austin with $1 billion in a Fendi briefcase. When Austin grabs just one stack of $100 bills, he notes that the money is short of a billion, to which Number 2 mentions the Fendi briefcase being part of it. They continue to argue until Dr. Evil presses the button to eliminate Number 2. Of course, Austin could have told that the money is short of a billion by the simple fact that you can't ''fit'' ten million $100 bills in a single briefcase.

-->-- '''Lucy,''' at her psych booth in ''ACharlieBrownChristmas''

* ''Film/AFunnyThingHappenedOnTheWayToTheForum'': Marcus Lycus can hear the sound of a coin purse being jingled across a noisy room. Pseudelous takes advantage of this to keep Lycus from asking too many questions.

* ''SpiceAndWolf'' has an instance that falls somewhere between this and TastyGold. [[CuteMonsterGirl Holo]] is able judge the purity of coins just by clinking them together, leading to the plot point that a city is minting coins that have a lower silver content and are thus worth less.

Could be {{Justified|Trope}}: since the paper they print money on is special paper, the sound it makes while flipping might be different than counterfeit bills printed on regular paper. And with coins, various densities and shapes could also make different sounds. Modern coin collectors can sometimes be tipped off that a dime or quarter is one of the pre-1965 varieties made of silver, if it sounds different than normal when landing on a tabletop.

* In the ''Complete Book of Villains'', a 2E ''DungeonsAndDragons'' supplement, a dragon is presented as an archetypical villain representing greed. When its minions bring it tribute, it listens to the coins being poured out onto its hoard, and immediately detects from the sound that one of them has cheated it.

* ''Film/AFunnyThingHappenedOnTheWayToTheForum'': Marcus Lycus can hear the sound of a coin purse being jingled across a noisy room.
-->"I know that sound... and I like it!"

->''"Boy, what a sound! How I love to hear that old money plink -- that beautiful sound of cold, hard cash! That beautiful, beautiful sound! Nickles, nickles, nickles... that beautiful sound of plinking nickles!"''

** One of the ways to check if a US quarter is made of silver (meaning if it's a pre-1965 coin) is to drop it on a hard surface: modern steel coins have a hollow, deeper sound; silver has a resonating, higher-pitched sound.

Could be {{Justified|Trope}}: since the paper they print money on is special paper, the sound it makes while flipping might be different than counterfeit bills printed on regular paper. And with coins, various densities and shapes could also make different sounds.

* A variation: the most famous folktale about the wise Japanese judge Ooka Tadasuke is about a restaurant owner suing a poor man for payment. The poor man would eat his daily meal of plain rice near the restaurant so he could smell the food cooking, which made his rice taste better; when the owner discovered this, he sued for payment, and judge Ooka found in favor of the restaurant owner. The poor man protested, saying he only had enough money for rent, showing the judge the few coins he had. Judge Ooka had the poor man pour the coins from one hand to the other a few times, and then told him he was free to go. When the restaurant owner said he hadn't been paid yet, judge Ooka informed him that he HAD just been paid -- the price of the smell of food is the sound of money.
** Variations of the story are told all the way to the British Isles.

** Additionally, one of the ways to check if a US quarter is made of silver (meaning if it's a pre-1965 coin) is to drop it on a hard surface: modern steel coins have a hollow, deeper sound; silver has a resonating, higher-pitched sound.
*** Pre-1965 U.S. dimes and half-dollars have this quality, as well. This Troper has been able to identify more than a few silver quarters and dimes from a handful of change because of the unique sound they make, even when just passed from hand to hand as a large group of coins.

* WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries had this in ''The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne''. The thug thumbing the money to his ears was appropriately named "Numbers".

* WesternAnimation/SouthPark episode ''Super Phun Time'' has a combination of this and subversion of TastyGold. Robbers had stolen both money and food from a Burger King. When one of them wants out, he is given his cut. He then flips through the ''sandwich'' to make sure that all of the toppings were there.
* Scrooge [=McDuck=] has done it on occasion obviously, and in one story (don't ask me the title) DonaldDuck is shown to have inherited the talent as well. (Being Donald of course, it soon turns out that it's no use if he has Scrooge's talents if he doesn't have his skills and work ethic as well.)

* On ''GoodTimes'', pimptastic crime lord Sweet Daddy does this to a stack of money he seized from his lieutenant, Bad News. This is because of a lack of trust in Bad News, who tried to bribe JJ into not giving Sweet Daddy a life-saving blood transfusion, so he could take over Sweet Daddy's operation.

* In ''DeepSpaceNine'', Quark once professes that the sound of two bricks of gold-pressed latinum tapping make the most beautiful sound in the galaxy, averted as he discovers through this process that they are nothing more than "worthless gold."

* [[AFunnyThingHappenedOnTheWayToTheForum Marcus Lycus]] can hear the sound of a coin purse being jingled across a noisy room.

* The Harry Crumb movie with the late John Candy has this. When he comes upon one stack of bills that he says is short by one, another character rolls her eyes and insists it's insane to think he could know that just by flipping through it. They count out the bills by hand, and sure enough, there's one bill missing.

* In ''series/startrekDeepSpaceNine'', Quark once professes that the sound of two bricks of gold-pressed latinum tapping make the most beautiful sound in the galaxy, averted as he discovers through this process that they are nothing more than "worthless gold."

* In ''DeepSpaceNine'', Quark once professes that the sound of two bricks of gold-pressed latinum tapping make the most beautiful sound in the galaxy, averted as he discovers through this process that they are nothing more than "worthless gold."

* In ''Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|DeepSpaceNine'', Quark once professes that the sound of two bricks of gold-pressed latinum tapping make the most beautiful sound in the galaxy, averted as he discovers through this process that they are nothing more than "worthless gold."

* In ''DeepSpaceNine|Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'', Quark once professes that the sound of two bricks of gold-pressed latinum tapping make the most beautiful sound in the galaxy, averted as he discovers through this process that they are nothing more than "worthless gold."

* In ''Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'', Quark once professes that the sound of two bricks of gold-pressed latinum tapping make the most beautiful sound in the galaxy, averted as he discovers through this process that they are nothing more than "worthless gold."

** Additionally, one of the ways to check if a US quarter is made of silver (meaning if it's a pre-1960 coin) is to drop it on a hard surface: modern steel coins have a hollow, deeper sound; silver has a resonating, higher-pitched sound.