I guess this isnt a “lost” wallet story per se, but last year I got pneumonia really bad and ended up staying in the hospital for a month. While I was unconscious and in surgery someone stole my wallet out of my hospital room. Pretty cold to say the least. Probably some nurse or something that was pissed off they had to take of my ass. It was awkward when the hospital handed over the bill for my care, as I had no wallet with which to pay…

As a 16 year old, newly minted driver I was driving my 14 year old sister to the store and we stopped for gas. After fueling we went to the counter to pay, and I realized I had forgotten my wallet. Explaining what I’d just discovered I offered to leave my sister as collateral while I went to get my wallet. My sister was too stunned to object and I think the clerk thought I was joking until he saw me get in my car and drive away.

When I returned 15 minutes later, wallet in hand, the embarrassed clerk didn’t mention my sulking sister and she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

New Year’s Eve in NYC a few years back. Also happens to be my birthday. After leaving the party to go hit up the bars I realize, in my drunken stupor, that I don’t have my wallet, my cell phone, or even my jacket on me. The bouncer asks for ID and I tell him I’ve got no wallet. My friends convince him that it’s my birthday, I’m drunk and I just lost everything. So in order to get in he says that I just have to tell him my birthday. I respond with today, I mean yesterday, 1980, Dec. 31st 2004, it’s today but it’s yesterday, you see it’s my birthday but it’s no longer my birthday, it’s todayesterday. After 3 minutes of this he just laughs at me and says if you would have just shut your mouth you would have been in already.

Hello, that’s a great game ! I love the Setgo Collection.

One day, I lost my wallet (a Vuitton) and a few days later I received a letter. This one contained a paper which told “Here are your identity card, driving licence and papers, but I keep the wallet, it’s a cute one and in a few days it will be my father’s birthday.”

True story. The boy kept my wallet to offer it to his father. Unbelievable…but, well…I got my papers back.

this might not be outrageous, but I was recently in Europe (Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam), and I was flying out of Amsterdam Sunday evening, I show up to the the airport at like 3:30, and I was about to check in, when i noticed my passport was gone! i checked through all my bags, and pockets, it was no where to be found. luckily I got an email from the hotel i stayed in in Paris that my passport/wallet have been turned in, and were at the front desk! but in Paris 450 miles away!!! Long story short I had to go back to Paris where the hotel was holding my wallet for me, and I wasn’t able to fly back to NYC till Wednesday! i was out $2400 for the flight, and three extra vacation days, my boss was not all that happy….

I don’t really have a most awkward lost wallet moment, but hey, preventative measures! Maybe with this bag, I’ll never have to explain my most awkward moment!

This still haunts me to this day.

I was a teenager and went to visit my grandparents at their house for dinner. When I get home my mother tells me that my grandmother called and said I left my wallet there. I turn around and got pick it up.

A few nights later- I’m at my girlfriends and when I go to retrieve a a condom from my wallet– its not there……..

It was a typical autumn Sunday in the beautiful wine region of Niagara in Ontario Canada. My friends and I had just finished playing a game of football in a local field. Driving home with my brother and three others, we decided to drop in at the local flee market and see if there were any hidden treasures.

Once inside, we walked around disgruntled by the poor selection and the odd odors. Deciding that there was definitely nothing of worth, we left. As we jumped back into the car I realized something was missing. The bag with my wallet, change of clothes, cologne, shoes and hat was gone. As we drove away I was furious and forced my friend to turn around thinking “it has got to be somewhere in that market”….

As we pulled into the parking lot I spotted a rugged man 10 + years my senior walking to his car. His teeth were rotten and falling out of his face and his hair was a greasy tangled mess. As he walked he was trying to conceal something over his right shoulder with a dusty old jacket – my bag.

My brother and I jumped from the car followed by my 3 friends and confronted the man. “That’s my bag you have there” I said. “This, I bought this inside” he responded. “Really, well I don’t care where you bought it, if you bought it or for how much. Hand it over!” Sheepishly he swung it off his shoulder and tossed it over to me saying “I paid 15 bucks for it at the market”. “Somehow I don’t believe you…”

My story is a little embarrassing but too funny not to tell. It’s a long one, but I think it’s worth it.
This just happened recently. Studying on exchange as a business student in Aarhus, Denmark, I have done my best to fully immerse myself in the culture. During one night of heavy arnbitter drinking with some Danes and a few French exchange students, I drunkenly decided to brave the hour and a half trek back to my apartment from downtown, the details of which I remember only vaguely. Of the three or so events I can recall from the walk, the first was my friend calling me a cab I refused to take, the second was being tired of walking, and the third was brief flash of finding a car that was unlocked on a random side street. The next thing I know, I have come-to to find myself standing in the middle of the street in handcuffs being spoken to by a Danish police officer with a very angry Danish man fuming on the sidewalk, standing next to a car that looked vaguely familiar.
At this point, I look down to notice that I am wearing someone else’s sweatshirt and, after a brief and handcuff-restricted survey of my situation, that my jacket, scarf, eyeglasses and (you guessed it) wallet are nowhere to be found. The surprisingly friendly Danish officer tells me that this man came out of his house at around 6:30 am to find me passed out in the driver’s seat of his car. The police officer escorts me to the patrol car, takes off the cuffs and puts me in the back, where I begin to tell his partner that I do not have any identification and begin providing my information. The original officer then gets in back with me and begins questioning me as to what I am doing in Denmark and why I was in the man’s car, to which I have no good response. I tell him I am an exchange student at the university and begin to pathetically fill him in on the details I can remember from the previous night, after which he accuses me of being on drugs because he “does not smell alcohol” on me. I then do my best to convince him that no drugs were involved and that I was simply very, very drunk, which made me take a second to think about how ridiculous it is to be explaining to a cop how drunk you were. The officer then tells me that I must take a breathalizer to prove it, which I enthusiastically agree to do. The reading comes up a little high (0.145 at 7 am). The officer reads it, laughs, then shows me the number saying “it’s a good thing you weren’t trying to drive.” He then tells me that he does not know how to charge me for this situation (although I was listing in my head a number of things he could have charged me for; trespassing, breaking and entering, attempted grand theft auto, and drunk in public to name a few) and that I am free to go. As the officer upfront is finishing up with his paperwork, the officer in back begins to ask me where I am from.
“The US,” I reply.
“Well that’s pretty obvious,” he smirks. “What part?”
“Oregon,” I say, confused.
“Oh, Oregon. I hear it’s nice there.”
“Yeah, it is. Am I free to go now?”
“Get out of the car and don’t let me see you again,” were his last words to me. With nothing in my possession but a strange sweatshirt, apparently a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, and a bruised ego, I walked back to the main street and caught the early bus to my apartment. I was leaving for London later that evening, but I went back to the bar we were last at, where I found my jacket but no eyeglasses, scarf, or wallet. Needless to say, that will be the last time I walk home from the bars in Denmark.

No story but thanks for the info on SETGO. The Transport urban bag is just what my boyfriend needs for Christmas. Neat stuff from thi8s Setgo guys…

I was in college meeting the president of this student club that i wanted to join. we were meeting at the campus pizza place…and i was taking out my wallet to pay and instead of just taking out my wallet, a tampon fell out of my jacket….RIGHT in front of him and when i was about to shake his hand. totally akw.

so i was moving in town one year – hate moving – and i rented a uhaul. moved, went smooth for once and i dropped off the uhaul. 2 hours later i get a call – “i rented a uhaul and i found your wallet in it but it’s going to cost you, call me – xxx-xxx-xxxx”. WHAT!? I call and the guy gives me his addy. i drive to his place and he seriously says that i can’t have my wallet back unless i give him all the cash that is in it ($120). ARE YOU KIDDING? i tell him i would gove him $20. he said no way and slams the door in my face. knock knock – no answer. i call the cops. they show up and i tell them what is going on. they stake out the back door and knock on his door and say the obligatory “POLICE!” the cop in the back radios the guy in front and it turned out the guy tried to escape out the back. it then turns out he has warrants out for his arrest. they make him tell where the wallet is and i get it back, cash and all. talk about a weird one – the guys shouldn’t have even called me!!!

I was traveling to Las Vegas for a conference, and thought I’d spend some time the day after exploring the city. I had made it about a mile down the strip, taking pictures along the way when I went into the Paull Frank store to buy something for my girlfriend, and realized that my wallet was gone. I don’t know if I absent-mindedly left it on the counter at the 7-11 where I bought a bottle of water, or if I was an easy mark for pickpockets, but it was gone.

The nice girl behind the counter managed to calm me down, find me the number for the last few placed I’d gone, but it didn’t show up anywhere. It was gone, along with all my money, my credit cards, my expense receipts and my ID. This made getting to the airport very difficult, and the hotel wouldn’t help me.

Fortunately, I had met someone at the conference the night before who lived in the city. I twittered him, asked him to call me and sheepishly asked if he could give me a ride to the airport. He agreed, promptly came to pick me up, gave me money for dinner and apologized that he couldn’t invite me over for dinner because he lived too far away to get back in time for my flight.

I was completely embarrassed to have to ask this near stranger for help, but humbled that he was so willing.

That’s my story. I never got the wallet back, but the new one I bought is terrible, so I’m in the market for a new one.

Mine is a little sad. I was with a group of friends while we were in college. Driving back to school from a spring break in mexico, we stopped at my parents for some dinner. Everything was great, we all had a great time. My grandmother found out I was in town for a few hours and I went to say Hi. While I am there, my mom calls me and says I need to come home now. I was a little freaked out. I get home and come to find out I left my wallet on the counter and while my dad was stashing some cash in it, found one of those picture booth strips of me and my then boyfriend lovey dovey and kissing. Surprise mom and dad… im gay. Needless to say it was a long saga, but now things are great.I came out because of my wallet.

I once left my wallet in a café on my college campus, but I realized it after the short walk back to my dorm room, which was in the same building. I went back right away, but it was already gone, and nobody at the café had seen it. When I checked my bank account online, a few hours later, I saw that the thief had charged an amazing amount of Chinese food to one of my credit cards. I was able to report all the cards as stolen, but I never convinced the bank to reverse the charges from the Chinese restaurant. Why? I had eaten there myself quite a few times that month.

A few hours after seeing a movie, I realized my wallet was missing. I went back to the theatre and talked to the manager. He asked me to describe my wallet: “It’s velcro, and it has a picture of a skeleton riding a skateboard.” They had it, and it was promptly replaced so I’d never have to say those words again.

3 days into starting a multi-country conference/etc tour that was going to last about two months, I lost my wallet in Montreal, the first stop.

Luckily I just rented a bike so I had a bike, a cell phone and $10 CAD for the remainder of a long music festival day. This proved sufficient, though the feeling you get without your wallet is definitely an experience.

The next two months were spent asking friends in assorted countries (Iceland, UK, Poland, Ukraine) to take money out of ATMs, followed up by a prompt Paypal payment from me. Tricky to manage all this cash in different currencies too, amped up the adventure, heh.

Don’t recommend it, even though I had tons of fun.

I was taking a cab to JFK to catch a flight home. The cab driver was weaving in and out of traffic so badly I started feeling car sick. Finally we get to the airport, I throw money at the guy, take off at high speed into the airport bathroom, where I throw up everywhere. I then decide I feel better, check in for my flight, get through security and try to get some food to make my empty tummy feel better. No wallet! Crap! I just had it to check in. Where could it be??? Back past security, franticly retracing my steps, racing so I don’t miss my flight. Nothing. Have to stand in line at security again. Suddenly I hear my name being paged for a lost item. I run to my gate, where a man returns my wallet to me. They’re boarding my flight but in the midst of all the excitement I am sick again. I rush off to the bathroom and throw up again. When I come back to the gate the doors are closed and they won’t let me board. I just KNOW that plane is still on the other side of that door so I start waging war. Eventually an airline worker over on the sidelines of the skirmish takes pity and opens the doors for me to board. The attendant sees me rush on and scolds me, saying “I told everyone you were JUST HERE a second ago.” Bad stomach grumbles for the whole flight. But at least my wallet was recovered.

As a newly-minted member of the Freshman class at college, I grew accustomed to carrying the wallet everywhere for the first time, as it held the card that served as both dorm key and meal ticket.

While using said card at the student union for a quick lunch between classes, I realized I was late. (And, as a freshman, had no idea how common this was.) Panic would serve as my downfall. Quickly ditching the trash from my tray table, I threw the wallet away as well.

Of course, it was only when I had walked halfway across campus that I realized my mistake.

I run back to the union. The entire time my mind is playing out two alternate scenarios. The difficulty of replacing every piece of plastic versus subjecting myself to the humiliation of sifting through trash amongst hundreds of my new classmates.

I chose the latter. Tried looking on top of the garbage. No such luck. Moved on to sifting. Then dumping the contents (the can was a hefty 50 gal.) And then, wading through them. Which led to inquiring janatorial services as to the whereabouts of a central dumpster. More wading.

All for naught. Had to leave defeated, demoralized, and dirty to make phone calls before my identity was stolen (and try to obscure my identity from every pair of eyes affixed to me with a mixture of amusement and disgust.)

I lost my wallet on my first date with my now husband.

We were going to see The Royal Tenenbaums in one of those giant Chicago movie theaters with 16 screens. We went into the wrong theater and in the mess of getting to the right one, my wallet got left behind.

As a frequent wallet loser, I know how long it can take to get back your debit card, credit card, etc. So I asked to borrow $200. He looked a little shocked, but agreed. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but his roommates were convinced he was never going to see me again. I promptly paid him back on date 2.

Most embarrassing and awkward moment of my life…for your enjoyment ~

Circa 1997 – Colorado Springs, CO
Like any competent male high-schooler, one always keeps a fresh string of condoms in his wallet. I was particularly tickled with the flavored string of raincoats I was sporting as I arrived at my girlfriend’s house amidst the heavy snow.

The heavy snow turned into a blizzard. Bam! I was stranded at my girlfriend house for a few days with her ultra-Christian conservative parents. Reader’s note: I had, a few weeks prior, gotten “the talk” from her Dad as to how to I would treat his daughter. He frankly informed me we would not be having sex…

We weren’t having sex. But as I borrowed a pair of her dad’s sweats and hunkered down to watch a movie with the fam, I didn’t notice her Mom pick up my jeans. Sure they were dirty, why not wash em – great!

Completely unaware of the horror that was about to unfold, good ol’ Mom plopped down on the couch with the freshly cleaned and dried laundry. What happened next always seems like a blur, but I remember seeing her pull out my wallet – my heart stopped instantly.

Like a colorful condom rainbow, the flavored latex skins were peppered throughout the load of laundry. Instantly the smell of strawberries, bananas and even chocolate wafted throughout the room. I distinctly remember the differing reactions on each family members face, until my girlfriend’s youngest sister asked, “Mommy, what are those?” Shoot me, I thought, please someone put me out of my misery. Oh but the misery had just began, I had to endure three days of being awkwardly stranded. It was horrible.

Pops consequently watched my like hawk. Mom couldn’t look me in the eyes. And the whole time I was thinking, “I couldn’t even do something if I wanted to – you ruined all my condoms.”

Oddly enough we broke up a few weeks later. Weird.

Well over a decade or so ago, a girlfriend and I were in the habit of going to our neighborhood coffeeshop to hang out, read, talk AND write/draw in a shared journal. Over time this journal became filled with all kinds of material from silly collaborative stories and exquisite corpse drawings to some very detailed, personal, and intimate memories/fantasies. Needless to say one of us left our bag at the coffeeshop with the notebook inside one day. It was some time before we noticed that the bag was missing. Since we both were in the habit of filling up notebooks and journals frequently without looking back on them it probably wasn’t strange that neither of us missed the journal either… Several months later hanging out at the coffeeshop we noticed that the notebook had become a well-worn and popular addition to their community bookshelf. My girlfriend and I were very shy types and needless to say were pretty horrified to realize that our most intimate writings had become our neighbors’ reading material.

I have a tendency to fiddle with the contents of my pockets often removing things like my wallet, keys, gum and making sure it’s all in the right pockets especially after changing clothes.

One day after playing some frisbee outside I drove downtown St. Paul to meet some people but hadnt yet changed into my jeans yet, so I’m switching everything out, putting my gum on my back car seat, my keys briefly in my mouth and don’t get ready to go to the bar.

After changing I start walking because if I can skip paying for parking I’ll walk 8 blocks. So I get to the door of the bar and I’m about to walk in and reach back and get that moment in my brain that says “Hey dumbass, your wallet is supposed to be in this pocket…”. So due to my own paranoia of losing my wallet, either somehow back at the field or dropping it on the walk I sprint back in sandles to find that I had left my glossy red and yellow wallet on the top of my car where it had been sitting nice and pretty for a good 10-15 minutes alone and undisturbed.

I’ve lost many a wallet, but this one takes the cake.

A couple buddies and I were looking for something to do late one night and decided on tp-ing a couple houses. One of the guys wasn’t really into that type of thing so we took it upon ourselves to convince him to go. He ended up driving and made the foolish decision of leaving the keys in the car while we were coating one of the houses in toilet paper. I remember his reasoning being that it would have provided for a quick get away if anything went wrong… Something went wrong. Apparently some thugs saw us buying the tp and followed us to our target house and then proceeded to steal my friends car, my wallet and cell phone sitting nice and pretty in the front seat. Still pisses me off to this day.

As a 16 year old, I lost my velcro wallet in a movie theater. About a week later, I got a ransom not, with all of the objects in my wallet taped to a piece of paper with comments scrawled next to them and a not threatening to call my mom if they did not get a sum of money. The wallet contained the kinds of things a 16 year olds wallet might, so the commentary was a folows: there was a rubber with the comment: old and unused; a joint with a comment that it was probably oregano (the joint was actually rolled in strawberry rolling papers). There was a picture of a girlfriend with a comment about her being a half man; and there was actually a membership card to a club I got out of a cap’n crunch box. All together, very embarrassing, but luckily I was wise enough to shrug it off and not pay the ransom. I lost a wallet, but I got a kick ass ransom note that kept on giving for years and years

my lost wallet tale is actually a much longer, funnier, crazier story of a night that started with a bottle of stroh 80 and and an unfinished 30 rack of keystone light. the “80″ is 80 % abv. we found this out after more closely inspecting the bottle. Undeterred, we walked downtown to one of the local bars drinking shots and shooters like water until we heard it was cool to crash my friend’s friend’s party. after arriving at the party I remembered having met some of the folks from an earlier visit to his school and left knowing they’d remember me. More drunk than I’ve ever been in the company of relative strangers…or ever, I dunked the Hookah in the hot tub twice, walked naked through their backyard, persistently cockblocked one of the hosts, water damaged my phone, lost my xmas present watch, boxers, and wallet. Luckily my id and some cash were in my pocket, but i lost my social (don’t keep on you), gift cards, cash and some bank/credit cards. To this day I doubt my things were “lost,” but I probably had it coming.

When I was traveling in Prague someone came up behind me and told me to give them my wallet. The guy had a pretty thick accent so I didn’t understand at first. It took me a second but I realized that I was getting robbed. So I pull my wallet out of my pocket, throw it to the ground and ran away.
Luckily it was my decoy wallet. It had a one dollar bill, a few fake credit cards that the credit card companies send you and a few random business cards. At the time the dollar was worth nothing so he didn’t get much. sucker.

Freshman year of college, maybe the second week of school, I got a call from some kid saying “Hey, I don’t know if you remember me. I was in your class in 5th grade. I just found your school ID in the dining hall.” I asked him if I could meet him somewhere to get it, and he said “Oh, I’m still in the dining hall. Don’t worry, I’ll just come to your room and bring it to you.”
I still have no idea how, without leaving the dining hall, this guy I had not seen or spoken to in over 7 years happened to find my ID card. And found my phone number. And dorm address.

I was driving cross-country from Arizona to New Jersey in a rented minivan containing everything I owned at the time – it was the first leg of the trip, I’d completed most of the first leg through AZ/NM and I was headed north into Albuquerque late at night on Rte. There I would meet friends who would put me up for the night.

Once in ABQ, I exited the highway an drove down an off-ramp that made a steady decline to a four-way stop intersection. As I approached, I realized I hadn’t gauged correctly the weight of my payload, and had to hit the brakes rather hard to make the stop sign. I felt the weight of my possessions lurch forward in the backseat. Worse, I heard a wrenching, popping sound coming from the front of the vehicle.

As I accelerated, I realized the tranny was blown. I ended up pushing the vehicle to a nearby service station, then called Avis to swap out their vehicle, waiting a good few hours for a new one to arrive.

When the new minivan arrived, my ABQ friends (who were kind enough to come down to help me) and I transferred all my stuff the new van, and the Avis guy took the old one away. All my stuff – minus one critical piece. Cavity searches of living and dead vehicles revealed nothing of the blue Eagle Creek velcro wallet, stolen and recovered in Prague five years earlier in an even odder story.

Flash back to an ill-fated stop in the Truth or Consequences a few hours earlier for grub, gas, and a hurried pee somewhere in the dark bushes, hearing the faint plop of something falling in the grass mid-urination but thinking little of it at the time.

I ended up at the local branch of my brank, draining my account of it’s final couple hundred bucks in order to get me through the duration of the trip. Once back on the east coast, I bought another blue Eagle Creek, which I have to this day.

So there you have it. Left my wallet in the Truth or Consequences. Made me feel like an Elephant Butte

Was riding a traincar in SF, and after I got off, near Union Square I went to go buy a soda. As I reach for my wallet I realize it’s gone. I ran back outside to see if it fell out, and right then I see the trolley and there’s a little kid on there goign through my wallet!