Where do you live? That matters, unless you're just asking from an ethics perspective. I'm not asking you to dox yourself, country/state is plenty.

Assuming you're Canadian(based off your instance being lemmy.ca) technically speaking you should report in to the police, and they'll hold it for 6 months. After that if someone hasn't claimed it you're free to claim it yourself. At least in Vancouver. Maybe the laws are different in other parts of Canada. Your local police probably have a non-emergency number for pretty much exactly this purpose if you wanna double check.

Realistically, it's not even $200. Probably keep it for a week or two and then tell the kid the cops couldn't find the original owner.

If it has no identifiable information the police won't be able to return it.

Like someone else said, the best way to get it back to its owner is to set up signs saying that you've found "something" and that if someone has lost anything in the park around certain date to contact you.

If after a few weeks you haven't found the owner just let the kid pocket it.

Very simple: if you lost $200, what would you like the person who found it to do?

Put posters signaling you found something (do not mention it's cash) and would like to return it if the person can say what it is on the phone.

If someone hasn't claimed it in 2 weeks, I'd give it to the kid (or well probably her parents).

I'd also ask the kid were exactly they got it. If it was in a tree hollow or something similar, it might have been hidden and meant to pay for a drug deal or something. You never know, I just wouldn't want that person having my contact info.

I'm assuming there was no ID or contact info with it, since you probably wouldn't be asking if there was.

Hypothetically, if you were to give it to the police, how would the police know that who the rightful owner is? If I walk into a police station right now and say I lost $200, do you think they would hand over $200 to me? No, I have no way of proving thats my money, and they wouldn't believe me for a second.

Keep it. Lord knows everyone could probably use an extra few hundred bucks these days...

If you find cash, keep it. If you find a wallet with other items (ID, personal stuff) hand it in.

My ex and I once found nearly $500 in cash in a Lowe's parking lot. What did we do? We put it in our pocket, and used it to help pay that month's rent.

Keep it.

Legally, in most jurisdictions, you report it.

Ethically, if there no ID or any identifiable infomation nearby, its very unlikely for the owner to be found, I think it's fine to keep it. (If there is an ID, you should give it to the authorities.)

If it were any amount above $1000, I wouldn't touch it, it could be drug money, don't want to get caught up in some drug cartel bussiness.

Keep it mind, cops could pocket it. So if you really want to find the owner, you should probably try to find them yourself, at the cost of your time and potentially getting falsely accused of being a thief.

TLDR:

Options:

1. Pocket it
2. Give it to the authorities
3. Find the owner on your own time
4. Leave it where you found it

Your choice.

Watch local social media to see if anyone reports losing money. If nothing, and you're trying to set a moral example, donate it to charity.

That could be someone's grocery or bail money.

Check if there's a local Facebook page. I don't use it myself but my daughter lost her phone recently and my wife had someone contact her before she even realised it was gone.

Give the finder $100, and use the other $100 to buy pizza and soda for the crew.

Just keep the dough. Finders keepers.

Where I live you actually don't go to the police. Anything left of on the street belongs to the municipality so you'd have to go to the municipalities office. That said, I'd think it's quite hard to track down owners of cash.. You can inform the appropriate body in your country that they can contact you if they find the owner. Then after some time (maybe documented somewhere?) you can keep it.

Your story needs a lot more context for anyone to provide reasonable advice on here.

If it's a nice clean park in an affluent neighbourhood, chances are someone accidentally lost the money.

If it's in a sketchy part of town with higher levels of crime nearby ... chances are it was drug money that was tossed for one reason or another because something bad happened.

So the resulting answers will be different .... if this all happened in a law abiding neighbourhood, then you should take your time and official avenues to figure out if someone lost their money. If it's in an obviously rough place where drug dealing or other illegal activity is happening, then I would probably say to just keep the money and don't talk about it too much. It's not easy or advisable to return money to criminals or people engaging in criminal activity.

Buy something you like, and then enjoy it.

Share with friends, if pertinent, or you’re just a cool dude

try having sex with it