32.) Diamond District Prospector

Many immigrants coming to America believed the streets here were "paved with gold." Unfortunately, that's not true... well, sort of. One man, Raffi Stepanian, discovered that the streets in New York City's Diamond District are somewhat paved with gold (and diamonds, gems, rubies, and platinum), if by paved you mean laying in the cracks of the pavement.

One day, Raffi realized that with the thousands of jewelry dealers and buyers walking up and down the streets of the Diamond District, at some point diamonds/gold/gems must fall off of people's clothing or get stuck under their shoes. So, he decided to go digging around in the cracks on the sidewalk. And what did he found? A shit-ton of the stuff - enough to make more than $100 a day. And unlike real prospecting, these diamonds are already cut and polished. All he has to do is sell them.

So, this obviously isn't making him rich, and he has to crawl around on his hands and knees on sidewalks that are less than pristine, but you have to give the guy credit for thinking up a pretty ingenious way to make money.

By Joe Lankheet