Have you met us? This is what we do.
I’m mildly sad that I didn’t take a few minutes to rummage around for some change the last time I encountered one of those souvenir penny-crushing machines.
They still make them in the UK. Now with KCIII and a “hazel doormouse” on the flipside. I’ve not seen one - only the 50p and it had some standard on the back - not a silvery hookah smoking caterpillar.
Cash is certainly not king in the UK. For some reason (money laundering/tax evasion?) the only cash-only businesses I know of are barbers and when my wife goes, beauty parlours.
Everything else is debit-card. (cash of course optional).
When I was in the USA for two weeks to clear up my mom’s house, I ended up spending more US cash from my leftovers. My mother also collected quarters - like $70 of them. In the UK they have those Coiinstar machines yet you can dump as many (UK obv) coins into the auto checkouts as you want.
At Walmart, their Coinstar machine was broken. I asked the guy at the desk, “Okay to spend about $35 in quarters?” I asked, as it would be a bit of a hassle. He said, “No. The Coin Machine is broken,” I called for the Manager, got approval, and spent almost every last one of those quarters, that time and another. Just counting them out in stacks of four..
If I can tangent, I worked at a Walmart for a while and a few times opened the Electronics outer register at 7AM. You got a drawer with $100 broken into various denominations. This old guy buys something for like $2.75 and hands me a $100 bill. I ask if he has anything less, and no answer. I hand over the contents of my drawer and call up front for a refill. Cash sucks.