Stock Money Bag

"This is a white cloth sack with a dollar sign on it, so presumably it's full of money. I mean, it has to be, right? I'm pretty sure it's illegal to put anything but money into a bag with a dollar sign on it."

— Kingdom of Loathing

Money in fiction, be it coins or paper is often stored inside sacks. These often have a dollar sign on them, regardless of the location the events take place (although the origin of a dollar sign predates the US dollar). The money bag is a very easy way to indicate wealth to a place or a person compared to, say, jewelry or fancy noble clothing. The small money bag is common enough before the time of paper money to be carried by commoners and nobles alike.

Of course, after the invention and popularity of paper money and consequently the invention of the wallet, the money bag became somewhat of a Dead Horse Trope in real life, although armored car services still use carbon fiber sacks for holding smaller denomination bills and rolled coins for delivery to businesses that need change for their cash registers. Supermarkets and megastores with multiple cashier lanes routinely stock and empty their tills in these pliant, lockable sacks that more closely resemble square pockets than teardrop bindles. Bigger plastic sacks full of money, however, are still regularly supplied to and from major financial institutions such as foreign currency exchanges, who regularly receive large quantities of cash from their suppliers and send back local currency they receive from sales in turn.

Stock Money Bags add to the cartoony feel of the fiction and hence show up a lot in Western Animation. They are also seen in many Bank Robbery plots. Video games, especially platform games, have them as well although, in a lot of those games, they only serve as a means to gain extra points.

Compare Thief Bag, a piece of standard equipment for burglars to stash their loot in.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Uncle Scrooge typically stores his money in big brown canvas sacks prominently marked with dollar signs. His Money Bin, in particular, often has large mounds of these bags lying around his office and the actual wealth storage area.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: An alien robs a high-speed train disguised as Billy the Kid atop a flying horse for a lark and he leaves with the loot in a white bag with a $ printed on the side.

Films — Animation

• The Christmas Tree: The mayor gives Ms. Mavilda two money bags after coming to check the orphanage. And he outright says that "two bags" is the usual amount of money he gives her.
• Pinocchio: While meeting with the Coachman, Honest John and Gideon show off a small sack containing the meager sum Stromboli paid them in exchange for Pinocchio. As the Coachman begins to make his proposition, he asks them, "How would you blokes like to make some real money?" and produces a much larger sack full of gold coins.
• Rabbits Run has Yosemite Sam notice a televised newscast for wanted criminals Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny, with a reward of $500,000. He then looks at the two rabbit characters in the bank, and recognizes them as the wanted fugitives. Sam's vision converts the rabbits into two sacks of money, each marked with a prominent dollar sign. As a capper, a cash register cha-ching is heard as well.
• Toy Story 3: In the opening action sequence, Mr. Potato Head is swiping several canvas bags marked with green dollar signs from a train car.

Films — Live-Action

• The Big Idea, an early Harold Lloyd short, has a bag marked "$10,000" found hidden in a vase.
• Cool World: The cutesy rabbit that sicced the Cool World Police Department upon the nefarious Goons ends up part of the debris left after the police vehicle smashes into a freight train. His last words are, "But I won," referring to a craps game he'd been playing. Just then, a huge sack of money with a prominent dollar sign falls on him, squashing him flat.
• D.E.B.S.: When Lucy Diamond and Scud return stolen money, it's stored in large bags, each with a dollar sign on it.
• The Mask: The Mask bursts out of Edge City Bank hauling two of these...right as Dorian's goons were about to break in and rob the place. Later on, they appear at the Coco Bongo's charity casino, probably as props.
• ¡Three Amigos!: In the Film Within a Film showing the titular Amigos, the poor Mexican peasants offer the Amigos a reward of a large bag with a "$" on it.
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. During the benefit concert for the city of Heartland USA, a great deal of the money collected from the audience is stored in bags with dollar signs on them.
• Zachariah: Zach and Matthew rob a bank and run out carrying sacks with dollar signs.

Literature

• In The Discworld Thieves' Guild Diary, the illustration of an Uncommon Thief shows him clutching two bags with "AM$" printed on them.

Live-Action TV

• Break the Bank (1976): Five money bag icons are hidden on the game board. A player wins by claiming three of them.
• A Key & Peele sketch that centers on a man buying things in a pawn shop that are totally for Christmas shopping and aren't going to be used to rob a bank reaches its peak when the buyer asks if the store has a bag with a dollar sign on it, which the clerk even calls "a cartoon money bag".
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In Cry Wilderness, Kinga and Max "invent" new ice cream cake designs for the Carvel franchise by rotating the Fudgie the Whale mold. One of these designs is "Bag of Money".
• In Penn & Teller: Fool Us, Stuart MacDonald's mirror trick act involves him using a mirror to multiple his cash. After several multiplications, his pile of cash becomes a bag with a dollar sign on it, which he proceeds to duplicate further with his magic mirror.

Music

• The album cover for Teenage Fanclub's album Bandwagonesque features a clipart image of a money bag with a dollar sign on it. According to Norman Blake, the goal was to make the cheapest album cover as a statement on the music industry. Unfortunately for the band, Gene Simmons claimed to have trademarked the stock money bag design, and the band's label, Geffen Records, sent Simmons a check to clear it.

Tabletop Games

• Monopoly: Uncle Pennybags is often shown carrying bags of money. There was also a sack of money as a playable token from 1999 until it was retired in 2007.

Video Games

• Animal Crossing: Large amounts of the game's currency, Bells, are depicted as brown canvas bags with tied-off tops and marked with star symbols.
• Bagman has you picking up and carrying around large sacks of money with a "$" symbol on them. You can drop them on the guards to stun them temporarily.
• Bank Panic: The bank's customers drop these off at the bank; you need to make sure customers deposit these money bags at all twelve doors in the bank.
• A Boy and His Blob: A lot of money in the NES version is stored in bags with a dollar sign.
• Castlevania: In some of the games, the enemies drop money bags with a dollar sign on them. Surprisingly, a lot of the games take place outside the United States and even before the dollar was issued for the first time.
• Circus Charlie: In one of the stages, there are dollar sign-marked bags inside rings of fire.
• Cliffhanger on the NES: Large grey money bags with $ sign on them are scattered throughout the levels for the player to collect.
• ClueSweeper: The "Highly Rewarded" achievements for getting at least $300 in multiple cases, are represented by a bag with a $ symbol on them.
• Fork Parker's Holiday Profit Hike: Floating human-sized money bags with $ symbol are items that can be picked up, increasing player's score.
• Gang Busters have you playing as two police detectives stopping a robbery, and throughout gameplay you can come across crooks hauling money bags behind them.
• Ghosts 'n Goblins takes place in a medieval English setting. Despite that, dollar bags are found.
• Gun Nac: Landers leave behind floating money bags when shot. These have a mirrored dollar symbol on them.
• Jump Bug: A common item in the game is a car-sized bag with a dollar sign on it.
• The Legend of Zelda: Wallets, which resemble drawstring pouches, always have a rupee on them. The denomination of rupee (determined by its color) indicates the relative capacity of the wallet. As with most examples, this serves as a necessary visual cue, as otherwise they could easily be confused with bomb bags or other items in Link's Hyperspace Arsenal.
• Monopoly: One of the twelve tokens available is a sack filled to overflowing with bundles of currency. The in-game announcer actually calls the token "sack o' money."
• Pizza Tower: Mr. Stick sometimes carries a brown bag with dollar sign drawn on it.
• Serious Sam II: One of the things that yield points is a stock money bag.
• Space Bomber features sacks of cash as points that the player can collect by the dozens.
• Spyro the Dragon: Moneybags, a greedy and miserly bear, carries a bag of money (or rather gems) around.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: Some levels feature money bags marked with letter "M", standing for Money. They are worth fifty coins.
  • Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 has a post-stage minigame where you have three chances to pick from two buckets, each money bag doubling the coins you've collected for the stage — and a weight splitting them. After the final boss, your funds are also converted to these, and how many of them you give to the genie affects what kind of new digs Wario gets, from a birdhouse, to a luxurious castle — and even his face on the moon for having maxed coins.
  • Mario Party: Several minigames oriented towards coin collection feature brown-colored round bags marked with the icon of a gold coin. These contain 5 coins each, and are coveted by the participating players as getting them yields more money than just chasing a single coin.
• Syberia: Kate Walker has to get her clockwork train towed by a canal boat to reach its winding station. Problem is, the boat crew demand 100 dollars in payment. When Kate manages to do a number of tasks for the nearby university's rectors, they give her a pouch of coins with a dollar sign on it. Especially strange, given that the game takes place in largely European cities.
• Tale Spin: Money bags with a dollar symbol on them are collectible pickups. Collecting money bags increases points.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: One of the areas in the final level, which takes place inside the mansion of the wealthy Montana Max, requires Buster (or one of his friends) to climb a vertical shaft while dodging round money bags (marked with the $ symbol) shot by cannons. Their speed makes them difficult to evade.
• Toontown Online: The Cashbot Mints have bags with dollar signs on shelves.
• Wizards & Warriors: Dollar-signed bags are commonly found. These also increase the score.

Webcomics

• Dinosaur Comics: This comes up when T. rex comes up with the idea of making laundry bags with dollar signs on them to riff on this trope. They were later Defictionalised!
• Loading Artist: Parodied in this strip where the hero's business plan consists of two steps: (1) buying stock money bags and (2) actually filling them up with money.

Web Videos

• Jerma985: In Fast Draw: Showdown, Jerma spots a lady running away with a cartoonishly large money bag, which he calls a "Scrooge McDuck Bag".
• The Nostalgia Critic: In his review of "the worst Christmas Special ever", Doug gets irritated at the caretaker in The Christmas Tree who pays the patroness of the orphanage two money bags all the time. The character doesn't even mention the amount of money. He just says: "Here are your two money bags, miss." The Critic dubs this "billionaire duck currency".
• Used in this clip about workplace motivation where the money bag is used to symbolize a big reward.

Western Animation

• Bugs and Thugs has the diminutive criminal Rocky rob the City Bank, and emerge with about eight full cloth sacks, which he throws into the rear passenger area of his getaway car. None of the sacks have a dollar sign, though, which is why Bugs Bunny mistakes them for sacks of laundry.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Parodied. In one episode, Eddy wants to impress his older brother by making a video that would show him as being very successful. One of the methods involves pretending on camera that he's a wealthy businessman with lots of money bags lying around. Then Double D, who's holding the camera, pans over to Ed, who takes garbage bags out of trash cans and slaps a dollar sign on them.
• Harley Quinn: In Season 3, Joker and his goons rob a bank and carry the money out of the vault in big sacks marked with dollar signs... so that Joker can announce that he's decided to run for the position of Mayor of Gotham, at which point he begins throwing money to the bystanders as a publicity stunt.
• The Powerpuff Girls combat and apprehend Femme Fatal, an armed robber that insists on being paid in Susan Anthony dollar coins; dollar bills have *euw* oppressive men on them. Femme Fatal totes her ill-gotten booty around in a stitched-together sack that bears a green stylized dollar sign.
• Rick and Morty: In "Mortynight Run", Rick is handed the sum of 3,000 flerbos in a money bag with a huge flerbos symbol on it that resembles a dollar sign.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire" has a grown Bart Simpson come to Ned Flanders's door needing cash. Ned, blinded by faulty laser eye surgery, opens the door. Hearing Bart's voice, Ned knows he's there for a cash bailout, and asks Bart if he brought his "mooching sack." Indeed, Bart concedes that he's brought "just the little one," which is a grey cloth sack about the size of a lunch bag, marked with a black dollar sign.
  • "The Boy Who Knew Too Much": Moe receives bribe money in court. It's a large bag with a dollar sign on it.
  • "Mayored to the Mob": Fat Tony hands a sack labeled with a dollar sign to Mayor Quimby. The latter notes that he prefers a less obvious case for his bribe money.
• In the Zootopia+ episode "Duke: The Musical", a number of bags spill out of the back of an armoured car, with the Z-with-a-line-through-it previously established as the Zootopian currency symbol.

Real Life

• This is how the purse originated: Before the advent of paper bills, when coinage was the main form of currency, it would often be kept on a small drawstring pouch carried on the belt.
• As the practice of collecting old circulated silver coins (such as pre-1965 90% silver American coins) for the purpose of investment has grown more popular, some bullion dealers sell their bulk silver coins in sacks. It's quite mesmerizing to watch hundreds of shiny silver coins being poured out from these bags, as seen in this video by a budding numismatist with a bag of mixed dimes.

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