History Main / HearMeTheMoney

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''LightNovel/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.

[[folder: Comic Books]]
* In one ''Scrooge [=McDuck=]'' comic, the Beagle Boys see a giant cash register being loaded into Scrooge's house, and assume that he's starting a home-business. All through the day, they hear sales being rung up, and conspire to pull a burglary. That night, they sneak into the basement, open the register and find...nothing! Scrooge just enjoys the sound of a sale so much that he's been making money melodies as a hobby.
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** In France, the deed is attributed to Saint Yves. "Le son paie l'odeur."

[[folder:Other]]

* 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 and an adaptation appears in the ''Literature/GirlsToTheRescue'' series.

* Scrooge [=McDuck=] has done it on occasion obviously, and in one story 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.)

* In one ''Scrooge McDuck'' comic, the Beagle Boys see a giant cash register being loaded into Scrooge's house, and assume that he's starting a home-business. All through the day, they hear sales being rung up, and conspire to pull a burglary. That night, they sneak into the basement, open the register and find...nothing! Scrooge just enjoys the sound of a sale so much that he's been making money melodies as a hobby.

* In the Franchise/StarWars live-action series ''Series/TheMandalorian'', the titular character is offered a spear made of pure beskar (AKA Mandalorian Steel, a supermetal that is highly effective as personal armor) as payment for a requested service. When momentarily offered the spear for examination, he checks it by tapping it against his own beskar steel gauntlet plate and listens to the resonating chime to confirm the spear's composition.

* 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 [[WorthlessYellowRocks "worthless gold"]] because [[WorthlessTreasureTwist all the latinum has already been removed]].

* 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.

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

* As noted in the trope description, bankers, cashiers, and others who physically deal with paper money gain the ability to spot counterfeits by ''feel,'' because legal money is usually printed on a special blend of paper.

** 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.

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 -- the "ring of truth." This is also why many old mechanical cash registers had marble shelves above the cash drawer. Gave an easy place to test the sound of the coins.

** Pre-1965 U.S. dimes and half-dollars have this quality, as well. A few people have 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.

* During Austin Powers's final confrontation with Dr. Evil in [[Film/AustinPowersInternationalManOfMystery the first film]], in a deleted scene, Number 2 attempts to bribe Austin with [[BriefcaseFullOfMoney $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.

-->'''Player King''': We can give you a tumble if that's your taste and times being what they are. Otherwise, for a jingle of coin we can do you a selection of gory romances, full of fine cadence and corpses, pirated from Italian; and it doesn't take much to make a jingle. Even a single coin has music in it

-->'''Player King'': We can give you a tumble if that's your taste and times being what they are. Otherwise, for a jingle of coin we can do you a selection of gory romances, full of fine cadence and corpses, pirated from Italian; and it doesn't take much to make a jingle. Even a single coin has music in it

* An early episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}'' had this once. Hawkeye was paymaster and after giving out the payroll, he lamented to Radar that he had lost out on at least $3000 because he was in the army in Korea instead of being home in private practice. Radar filed some paperwork and $3000 arrived in the middle of the episode. Hawkeye holds up a bundle of bills and listens to it. He does it with a second bundle and remarks there's one missing from it.

* During Austin Powers's final confrontation with Dr. Evil in [[Film/AustinPowersInternationalManOfMystery 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.

* 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."