Animal Crossing: New Horizons player discovers criminally easy way to make thousands of Bells

The new donation box item in Animal Crossing: New Horizons — (Image credit: Nintendo)

It's been over three years since the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but players are still finding surprising tips and tricks hidden in the game.

As first spotted by Kotaku, one Animal Crossing player over on Reddit has shared a lesser-known money-making scheme that doesn't require much trickery or glitching - just the ability to sleep at night with a guilty conscious. The player in question can be seen below selling their island's donation box to Timmy and Tommy of Nook's Cranny for an impressive 199,920 Bells, which is a pretty good profit considering it only cost 800 Nook Miles tickets to build.

If you don't know, the donation box item was added to New Horizons in the 2.0 update and the idea is that you can place it on your island and your residents/visitors can leave small tips for all the hard work you've put into making the island a home. Each person can only donate 1,000 Bells at a time but the box itself can hold up to 99,000 Bells.

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It’s donation box day and it feels illegal from r/AnimalCrossing

So how are you able to double the amount of Bells in the donation box? As Animal Crossing: New Horizons players will already know, each day Timmy and Tommy will advertise a new 'Hot Item' they're after which, if the player successfully finds and sells to them, will result in double the amount of Bells given in exchange.

Sometimes, Timmy and Tommy choose violence and offer double for the donation box - it's not just the box they're paying for though, they also want all of the donations inside of it. What this means is that if you manage to fill the donation box up to its 99,000 limit, you'll be able to sell it (only on the days that Nook's nephews want it) for double that. It just requires a lot of patience to fill up.

"I think you probably just created a whole wave of new criminals," one Animal Crossing player replied in the comments of the Reddit post. So if you too want to become a criminal on your island, all you need to do is get hold of the donation box DIY recipe (which can be purchased for 800 Nook Miles via the Nook Stop in Resident Services) and build it using four pieces of softwood and four pieces of regular wood - you'll be able to pay your mortgage back in no time!

Struggling to get back into island life these days? Take a look at our games like Animal Crossing list to find out what else you could be playing.

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.