One of the restaurants where I sometimes eat lunch contacted me to say that they had made a mistake and billed my credit card €2260 instead of €22.60 last time I was there with a friend. Apparently they couldn’t just reverse it but wanted to refund me in cash. So I dropped in today, picked up the €2k and change, and walked it straight over to my bank, fortunately just around the corner.

I got to thinking, though, about handling large amounts of cash. I once had to bank £7000 in takings from a shop I was managing, which is certainly the most British currency I’ve ever handled. But in the wild days of my time in Bosnia, I routinely did the Sarajevo-Banja Luka run with more than that in Deutschmarks, probably going up to DM 50,000 occasionally, though I don’t remember exactly.

These days, so much is done electronically that it is rare for me to have even a hundred euro on me in cash (muggers please note).

So, what’s the most worryingly vast amount of cash you have ever handled?