You would prefer this?
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Roll the coins
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Use CoinStar
ISTM that any number of assumptions can be made about either of those options, and that choices should be made with complete data.
You would prefer this?
Roll the coins
Use CoinStar
ISTM that any number of assumptions can be made about either of those options, and that choices should be made with complete data.
Amazon account credit is worth pretty close to cash value to me, so I’d go to Coinstar and get Amazon credit.
If it’s not worth that to you, I bet you can find someone it is worth that to, and sell it to them at a smaller discount than 12%. I’ll take it for a 5% discount if you want.
My credit union has counting machines in each branch, thank goodness, but it’d be worth savubg the Coinstar fee to roll the coins myself. I’d even buy the wrappers myself - they’re cheap.
At our credit union, if you’re not a member, you pay 5% - lots cheaper than Coinstar - is that an alternative for you?
I knew what I was going to do before I posted the poll. The poll is to see what other people would do.
I’ve just returned from the supermarket. The 0.625 gallon (2.5 quarts) bucket held $310 in coins (including three Suzies – I would have seen any Sackies), plus one quarter, three dimes, one nickel, and three pennies, Canadian. The fee was $40. Cash-in-hand: $270.
When I was a teen, my parents paid me a nickel a roll for rolling coins for them. (The value of the coins didn’t matter, and most were pennies anyway.) I’ve forgotten how much I earned.
Does your supermarket have self-checkout machines that take cash? Next time you need food take a few handfuls of change and pay with those. Just dump 'em all in the funnel; the machine will count them. (Note: may be a touch slow.) When you run out of coins pay the rest with cash or card. And build up the credit union account by spending less of it on groceries.
Another vote for Coinstar/Amazon gift receipt … if the drive isn’t too far.
But certainly the OP will at some point be driving to an area that would have a store with Coinstar in a matter of months. Take the pile along.
One of my kids dumped a big jar on me when moving. Took it to the store and in very little time got an Amazon gift receipt and maybe 3 non-coins. Gave the kid the Amazon gift receipt. Impressed the kid with my savvy.
I don’t know aboiut “most”… when I was doing a lot of bank deposits for Girl Scouts, the branches I went to did not usually have them.
One of our credit unions has one still (I think); another one just got rid of theirs. Too bad; I have a basketful of change and it’s kind of fun to feed the coins to the machine.
I have been saving change for years. It’s just a habit that I enjoy. Anyway, I use a battery-operated sorter and plastic counting tubes (which I got for next to nothing at yard sales) to roll it all up. Just to double-check the count in a roll, I weigh the roll on my little kitchen scale that goes to the tenth of a gram (this won’t work on cents). When I want to spend some, I take it to Coinstar and get an Amazon certificate.
Curiously, I have found that the Coinstars in Walmarts don’t offer Amazon credit! I can’t imagine why not! lol
With your grasp of mathematics I’m not sure you should be doing any money counting at all.
mmm
Take the coins to a bank and ask for $2 bills in return.
Hilarity ensues.
Absolutely roll your own coins if they’ll let you do it that way. You’ll come out way ahead shorting each roll by almost $4.
Weighing? Writing account numbers on them?
Canadian banks must be more trusting. I just walk in and say “I’d like to deposit these coins, please.”
The teller counts them (or tells them, I guess, if you want to be tachnical ), and then I get a chit showing the deposit to my account.
We go the Coinstar/gift card route.
Neither is quite true, so I voted the last option.
A friend owns some rental properties with washers and dryers, and one thing I do as a friend is count the quarters, wrap them and lug them into the bank (those suckas are heavy). I expect the bank counts them again, but my friend likes to know how many, so what the heck.
Me, for my own pocket change, I’ve found that Coinstar will add the coin value to gift cards - no service charge, even - so I use it to subsidize my caffeine habit at Starbucks. Ah, the convenience of modern tech.
You’re the first one to notice in many hours, so apparently I’m in good company.
I’ve recently done some coin-cashing-in, but it’s not quite the same situation as any others. You see, I don’t have a change jar, I have a found coin jar. I do a lot a cycling and some 15 years ago, I noticed a lot of coins by the side of the road. For some reason I began to stop and pick them up.
I collected two and a fraction quart mayonaise jars of coins and recently I tried to cash some in. Well I quickly found out that the coin counting machine at the CU was picky about the state of the coins. Many of them are badly damaged (I think of them as road-killed), so I first went through and separated out the ones that I was sure would not be accepted. That was about half the first jar. The other half got me over $30. And even then, it still rejected some coins without returning them.
So now I have half a jar of badly damaged coins that I’m not sure how I can cash in. If there were a US mint nearby, perhaps I could take them there, but the nearest one is 600-some miles away.
I voted C since I’ve never, ever heard of CoinStar.
Americans are certainly queer about their coins. Rolling them into little stacks in specially-purchased paper wrappers? It’s crazy.
Can you use them in a vending machine?
Yeah, this is what I always do. It’s not worth the hassle for any benefit to building my account. Amazon gift cards always get used up.