I don’t know if this has changed since this was posted 5 years ago, but the CoinStar machines around here WILL give you back the coins that it couldn’t verify, including foreign or off-modern-format coins. They get kicked out to a little hopper in the front.
Me, too.
Change I receive goes into my pocket, and at the end of the day I empty my pockets - change goes into a tray on my dresser, right next to my wallet, keys, and cell phone. The next morning, the change goes back into my pocket.
Sometimes I only have a few pennies in my pocket, sometimes I have over a buck, but, over time, I typically have about 70 cents. That and a dollar gets me a cup of coffee in the morning.
Pennies go in the garbage - silver stuff goes in vending machines…
One time I put a dollar coin in a CoinStar. All it did was rattle around…it didn’t get counted.
A relative of mine used to just use her big jar o’ change to go on a semi-annual slots binge. I suppose since the take from a slot machine is usually something like 5%, that’s a better deal than the 9% the CoinStar takes!
Basically true but you only feed the Coinstar once. People generally play slot machines until they run out of money a few percentage points at a time punctuated by a big win every now and then.
This thread caused me to take my own change jar to a Coinstar machine this evening. It was a big but not huge jar. I was a bad guesser. I thought there would be about $150 in change in it. It turned out to be over $400 because I had so many quarters. I was so proud when they had to call for management approval just to cash my voucher. The privilege of using it did cost me close to $40 but there is no way I was rolling it myself or dragging it to the bank. I consider it a free gift from past me to present day me.
I still do, takes maybe five years (possibly more) to fill. The idea that people have so many coins that you need a fleet of conveniently located machines to deal with it had never occurred to me. When my jar is full, off to the bank, they dump it their machine - clunkety clunk $800-1000 in the bank.
That’s what I do, thanks to a coin sieve that I came across at a dollar store, which I paid for in coin.
It’s called the coin return slot. I found a pure silver 1949 dime that way, since it was lighter than the other coins it was rejected.
And they don’t charge you for this service? Back around 2000, I was in charge of the computer science graduate student union’s pop machine at my university. We’d have to empty the coin box every month or so and then organize coin-rolling parties to sort, roll, and count all the coins. We had the option of taking the loose coins to the bank, but they would charge us a hefty commission to count them.
On a separate note, I always thought that these machines were perfect for money laundering, and I’ve half-suspected for years that most are owned by some form of criminal enterprise.
Generally, banks will charge their business customers for this service, as the business customers will bring in HUGE amounts of coins from vending machines on a daily basis. A nonbusiness customer, on the other hand, will bring in some change once in a while, say every six months to every six years, so it’s not such a burden.
I bank at the city employee’s credit union. They will do this for free, but they won’t do it on the city payday, because of course that’s when they’re the busiest.
Consider how many coins would have to be moved to launder drug money amounts. If you brought in a boxcar of pennies to the bank every day, someone is bound to notice. So I doubt that money laundering with coins is all that prevalent.
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
Not to mention - you wind up with either cash money, or gift cards. The cash would arouse suspicions if you deposited it; if you just spent it, the coins would be just as spendable. Plus, I doubt too many drug deals are done with coins vs. bills. Too heavy / cumbersome.
Re banks and counting machines: Relatively few banks around here have them. The one where I specifically recall seeing one, it was only for customers (while I was making a deposit into an account there, it was Girl Scout money and not my own account, so I couldn’t have used it). The bank we deposit our coins into asks us to bring them in rolled.
We did use the Coinstar machine once, when we were going to make a purchase at Amazon, so we used the gift card option.
How big a jar adds up to that much??
We have a basket, probably holds about quart or less, and I’ve never gotten more than 80ish bucks from it.
Nitpick: You Wrap loose change. When they are wrapped, then they are rolls. You don’t roll loose change. Just sayin’
I guess it could be, though, if your criminal organization dealt with slot machines.
I remember a post on the SDMB that at one time Coinstar was running a promotion where you could get Amazon gift cards at a discount (like a fifty-dollar gift card for forty dollars in change). I’d love to be alerted if anyone hears that they’re doing that again, as I’ll go to the bank and buy up rolls of quarters to get the gift cards.
Hell last I checked it was a 100% deal for the gift credits ($50 in, $50 out for use on Amazon).