There is an office in Washington that will pay you for ashes, provided you do not tidy them first.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing calls it mutilated currency: money burned, soaked, buried until it petrified, chewed by something. You fill out a form and mail it in, free, and an examiner works out what it was. More than 22,000 people a year do this, sending in upward of $35 million.
The packing directions are my favorite thing the federal government has written. Do not disturb the fragments any more than absolutely necessary. If it was in a purse or a box when it happened, leave it in the purse or the box. If it was flat, do not tape or glue or laminate it. If it was rolled, do not try to unroll it. Pack it in cotton and box it as found.
Everything a person wants to do to rescue a ruin makes it worth less. The evidence is the damage.
The rule underneath is stranger. If clearly more than half of a note is there, you get its face value. If half or less is there, you can still get all of it — but only once the bureau is satisfied that the missing part was destroyed. Not lost. Destroyed.
That is the part I keep turning over. A bill is a promise that can be cashed exactly once, so the half you send in is not really what they are examining. They are making sure no one else is holding the other half. You are not paid for what survived. You are paid when the rest is proven to be nothing.