Had just made a joke about this and it got me wondering: is this a dick move? Is it even legal? Nobody truly believes their wish will come true, right? That’s just free money sitting in the water. Or would most people these days consider them to be donations? I can only assume that someone has to clean them out every now and then so as not to become totally filled with coins. Who would keep it? The city? The private institution that owns the fountain (if in some corporate lobby area or something)? Is it donated to charity?
Secondary question: Is this even a tradition outside the US? How common around the world is throwing coins into wells or fountains and making a wish?
A long, loooonng time ago I met a woman who was one of the people dressing up as reenactors in an early colonial American settlement. She cosplayed as a weaver in a house that had a pond outside. Every day before she started work she would hoik her skirt up under her armpits and wade into the pond to pick up coins with her feet (she had very articulate toes). Inevitably she turned round one day to find a family of visitors gawping at her non-colonial underwear. She said the coins added up to quite a haul over the week.