Christmas kettle is The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....

's most famous street campaign. It is most recognized during the Christmas season

Christmas season

Christmastide is one of the seasons of the liturgical year of most Christian churches. It tends to be defined as the period from Christmas Eve to the evening of 5 January, the day before Epiphany...

 through its volunteers who stand outside of businesses and play or sing Christmas carols, or ring bells to inspire passersby to place donations of cash and checks inside the trademark red kettles.

History

A tradition on the "kettle" started in 1891, in San Francisco, by Captain Joseph McFee. Salvation Army officer Captain Joseph McFee, resolving to provide a free Christmas dinner to the poor of San Francisco, remembered a sight he saw in Liverpool, England. From his days as a sailor McFee remembered a large pot displayed on the Stage Landing, called "Simpson's Pot." The pot took in donations put in by passersby. Taking this idea, McFee asked for permission from San Francisco city authorities to place a crab pot and tripod at the Oakland ferry landing. The kettle - and McFee's call of "Keep the Pot Boiling!" - drew in passengers and donations.

The idea spread, and is in use by many Salvation Army charities worldwide. Innovations from the crab pot have included self ringing kettles, booths that play Christmas music, and Credit Card

Credit card

A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...

 capabilities.

The Christmas kettle campaign is traditionally kicked off each year during the halftime of the Dallas Cowboys

Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise which plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League . They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas...

 Thanksgiving Day football game.

Anonymous gold coin donations

A tradition has developed in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 where, in some places, gold coins are anonymously inserted into the kettles in which the bell ringers collect donations. The tradition appears to have started in the Midwest when the first known drop of a gold coin was put into a kettle in Crystal Lake, Illinois

Crystal Lake, Illinois

Crystal Lake is a city located in southeastern McHenry County in northeastern Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs. It is named after Crystal Lake, a lake located west-southwest of downtown. Crystal Lake is also a suburb of the city of Chicago. The population was 38,000 at the 2000 census, but as of...

 in 1982. Since this drop, many others have taken to dropping not only gold coins, but also other bullion and rare coins, gold medals, and jewelry.

Some of the finds include:

• Various bullion coins.
  • American Gold Eagle
    American Gold Eagle
    The American Gold Eagle is an official gold bullion coin of the United States. Authorized under the Gold Bullion Coin Act of 1985, it was first released by the United States Mint in 1986.- Details :...
    
    
  • Krugerrand
    Krugerrand
    The Krugerrand is a South African gold coin, first minted in 1967 to help market South African gold. The coin, produced by the South African Mint, proved popular and by 1980 the Krugerrand accounted for 90% of the gold coin market. The name itself is a compound of Kruger and rand, the South...
    
    
• Rare coins
  • United States Quarter Eagle
    Quarter Eagle
    The quarter eagle was a coin issued by the United States with a denomination of two hundred and fifty cents, or two dollars and fifty cents. It was given its name in the Coinage Act of 1792, as a derivation from the US ten-dollar eagle coin...
    
    
  • United States Double Eagle
    Double Eagle
    A Double Eagle is a gold coin of the United States with a denomination of $20. . The coins are made from a 90% gold and 10% copper alloy....
    
    
  • Counterfeit
    Counterfeit
    To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product...
    
     1804 silver dollar
    1804 silver dollar
    The 1804 Silver Dollar is a United States dollar coin considered to be one of the rarest and most famous coins in the world, due to its unique history. Divided into "Classes," 15 specimens are known. Eight comprise Class I, which were minted in 1834. Two Class I specimens trace their lineage to the...
    
    
• Jewelry
  • ⅓-carat diamond
    Diamond
    In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
    
     ring
  • Five gold rings (invoking the song The Twelve Days of Christmas
    The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)
    "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol that enumerates a series of increasingly grand gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas. Although first published in England in 1780, textual evidence may indicate the song is French in origin...
    
    )
• Check
  Cheque
  A cheque is a document/instrument See the negotiable cow—itself a fictional story—for discussions of cheques written on unusual surfaces. that orders a payment of money from a bank account...
  
  for $14,845.00
• Gold teeth

In addition, Salvation Army kettles have also collected worthless items like candy, lint and other assorted trash.