do banks sell rolls of nickels, dimes and pennies like they sell the familiar rolls of quarters? Or do stores manage to avoid change deficit just naturally through customers paying with small coins?
Yes.
When I worked Armored, we delivered coins to area banks, that were then distributed to their customers, AND we had businesses (mostly grocery stores) where we delivered coins direct.
I haven’t worked retail in the United States, which I assume is where you are based, but back when I worked retail in South Africa we absolutely needed a float of all denominations we could give change in, and we got this from the bank in rolls of coins.
I bet its the same in the United States. It is hard to imagine that the inflow of exact change will match the outflow of change required.
Of course banks have rolls of pennies, nickels and dimes as well as quarters. You can easily prove this to yourself by walking into a bank and asking them for whatever rolls you need. Now, if you’re a store that regularly needs large amounts of change, the bank is going to want you to plan ahead so that they’ll have what you need.
When I was managing a movie theater we had a safe that always had the same amount of money in it.
So say there was 5000.00 in the safe, after a trip to the bank that 5000.00 would be in assorted change and 1s, 5s, and 10s. As the week wore on the amount of smaller bills and change would be reduced and the amount of larger bills, usually 20s, would increase. At the end of the week you would use the larger bills to “buy” new smaller bills and change.
In Britain I’ve seen little canvas bags with, say, £5 in pence ( or similar ) to varying permutations of total & type ( perhaps differently coloured canvas for ease of identification ). Always assumed they were for banks, but perhaps they were for shopkeepers.
The use of that, as opposed to rolling them in packets presumably by machine, is that it relies on weight. 500 pennies will always weigh the same, since they no longer get worn as coins did in yesteryear.
I’ve got a few worthless coins from past centuries which are nearly indecypherable discs…
You’ve never seen a roll of nickels, dimes or pennies? Seriously?
A roll of pennies is 50 cents (50 coins)
A roll of nickles is $2 (40 coins)
A roll of dimes is $5 (50 coins)
A roll of quarters is $10 (40 coins)
A roll of half dollars is $10 (20 coins)
A roll of dollar coins is $25 (25 coins)
Back when I was managing a Blockbuster, we’d call the bank in the morning with our coin order, based on what we had in the safe and what we thought we’d go through in a day: “I need 7 rolls of pennies, 10 of nickels, 6 of dimes, 12 of quarters,” for instance. Then they’d have it ready when we took the deposit from the preceding day’s sales over for drop off. During our busiest days, like Christmas day, we’d call in our coin order the night before, because it was often a total of more than 50 coin rolls, and it was much appreciated by the bank branch to have some time to get it ready.
It takes a little practice to get a feel for how many of each coin you’ll probably need for a day. We always went through a crap ton of quarters and pennies, but not too many dimes. Just a function of our pricing.
if you go to a prominently placed panera/chipotle/mcdonalds just before the lunch rush and you’ll see cashiers bashing open coin sleeves left and right in preparation for the onslaught.
and they’re all labeled, and even color coordinated.
the really perplexing part is that the OP knows about quarter rolls and not the other denominations.
If s/he lives in the city, s/he probably buys rolls of quarters from the bank or the supermarket for the laundromat.
In every cashier job that I’ve ever worked, the till usually had a few rolls of coins in it at the beginning of each day. Depending on the business, a manager might come around to collect the 20s, 50s, and 100s out of the drawer or safe and replenish the singles and fives and coin rolls. In the convenience store, we had a safe that would dispense rolls of coins, or five ones or two fives, but it would only dispense one item every three or five minutes.
As others have said, yes, stores have to purchase their change. Some store negotiate with the bank to get it free, but it typically winds up being about 15¢ per roll or $6.00 per box (50 rolls).
Yup, that means if a store, with a business checking account, goes into their bank and asks for a roll of pennies, even though it only has 50 pennies in it, they’ll have to pay 65¢ for it.
When ever possible I try to buy change by the box to save the $2.50. No problem with pennies, nickles or dimes, but a $500 box of quarters is tough since (without going into to much detail) that eats up a good chunk of what we keep in the safe for a 2 or 3 days until we use some of it up…and it’s really heavy, so I’d rather avoid carrying from the bank to my car and then the car into work, especially if I’m getting other boxes of coins as well that day.
Where on earth do you bank? I’ve never even heard of such a thing. I’ve owned a retail store for almost ten years, and I’d never put up with being charged for change. I regularly go over to the bank with big bills (20s, 50s, 100s), deposit some, and buy small bills and coins with the rest. If my bank said they were going to charge for that, I’d close my account on the spot. There’s another bank right down the street.
We’ve banked at M&I, US Bank and a Milwaukee bank called Park Bank, all three have charged for rolled coins as well as strapped paper money. You have to figure that the bank is paying for that money (they are ordering it from someone else, not rolling and boxing it themselves) and they are going to pass it along to the customer, so even if they aren’t charging you directly, somewhere along the line, you are paying for it. Honestly, I’d rather just pay for what I use rather then have my little change orders (about $500-$1000 per week) get averaged in with everyone elses. I’d probably wind up paying more that way.
I have seen vending machines for rolls of coins in a few places around Toronto (Square One and Yonge & Bloor). For some reason, they were only accessible to people with business accounts, which always seemed a but shortsighted to me. They would probably have done quite a bit of business with regular consumers, such as people needing laundry change.
I believe you Joey P but I have never heard of that except in the case of paying for armored car deliveries. Do you do other business with the bank ie. loans, line of credit. Most banks I have worked with give you the little things for free to get your loan business.
Is the OP a whoosh? I can walk into any bank and get rolls of pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters at face value with no charge. I’ve never heard of being charged for change.
I’ve never heard of a regular customer being charged beyond face value either, it’s a service they provide since typical customers with personal checking accounts aren’t going through that much change. It’s the business’ that they charge. A buddy of mine that owns a small business, can, in his peak season, go through $30,000 dollars worth of change in a week.
When I go to the bank I usually see the change orders lined up for other customers, I regularly see orders anywhere from $50-$5000.
As I said before, this costs the bank money, in the end, whether you are billed directly for it or not, at some point they have to pass this along to the customer.
Yes, it’s work to sort and roll the coins, and yes, someone has to get paid for it, but I always figured the profit was on the other end, with things like the Coinstar machines. Coinstar can afford to sell their sorted coins to banks at face value, since they’re not paying face value for them from the customers (or they’re paying gift certificates worth the face value, but they’re surely getting those for less than face, too).
Banks in Chicago will allow just so much rolled change before they charge you for it, for personal banking.
For instance my bank allows 5 rolls per transaction then charges 20¢ per roll. Of course you could just go in every day, that is for personal use
For business banking they charge. I’ve worked in hotels and they would charge between a nickel and a dime for each roll of change. Banks in the Chicago area seem to be hostile to small businesses. I know when I did bookkeeping for a small company, I was shocked at it was impossible for me to find any bank that would give us a good rate. It’s like the banks didn’t want any business.
When I was the asst controller for a hotel, we managed the change and rolled our own. A money counting machine for bills and coins was cheap and about 99.9% accurate, though I would tell all the cashiers to count their self-rolled coins.