It's strange how it works. My college group could spend an hour figuring out why a single copper piece was in the center of a circular room, then argue over who gets to keep it. Later we just do a quick search through a dragon's horde to find the magic items, gems, jewelry, and platinum. We could have taken some of the gold, but no one really wanted to calculate their encumbrance to do so. The only gold piece we took was the player exchanging the fought over copper piece for a gold piece...
During my first campaign of a different RPG, I used to give out the GM's favor (L5R RPG, with the favor based on the CCG). Basically the most recent person to have done something for me at the session, such as getting me a drink or snack, would get the favor. If someone else had it, they'd take it from them (I even had a token I used for this purpose). There were various things you could spend it for in game, such as forcing an enemy to choose another target for an attack (if there was a legal target), automatically moving to the top of the initiative, refreshing void points, and prevent a loss of honor. I eventually got rid of it, because while it was a cool concept, it distracted from the gameplay.
