Thieves may not have been counting on finding a mountain of change when they broke into a truck filled with $750,000 in dimes, but they still made off with a chunk of the cargo and left coins scattered around a Philadelphia parking lot, authorities said.
Authorities say the thieves apparently fled with at least $100,000. It's not yet known how they carted off the mounds of dimes.
The theft was reported around 6 a.m. Thursday. The tractor-trailer driver had picked up the dimes from the Philadelphia Mint on Wednesday, authorities said, and was planning to transport them to Florida on Thursday.
It's not clear how many people may have been involved in the theft or if they knew what the truck contained. Responding police officers found hundreds of dimes scattered all over the parking lot, and authorities were still trying to determine how much money was stolen.
Because tennis balls are extremely hard to recycle and the industry has yet to develop a ball to make that easier, nearly all of the 330 million balls made worldwide each year eventually get chucked in the garbage, with most ending up in landfills.
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