My PO has an envelope machine @.10 each. I can’t say I’ve tried it. But it’s there.
This is my collection of loose change that I have accumulated over the last ten years, mostly (Australian) 20c coins, where I figured I’d find some use for them on occasion. But I never did, and now I don’t use cash at all.
If you are very fast with your hand, you could buy an ounce of gasoline at a self-service station, couldn’t you?
The O.P. doesn’t specify that it must be a normal, retail purchase of a first-hand nature. So a garage sale addict like me can buy a wide range of things: an article of clothing, a paperback book, possibly even a hard-cover. And so on.
Yes, that’s what actual, physical quarters are good for nowadays.
About ten years ago was the last time I needed quarters to do laudry, though of course I needed way more than just one. Slightly more recently I used them at the coin-operated car wash (again, many more than just one).
I mostly associate quarters with the coin-operated video games and pinball machines from childhood, which almost always took a quarter to play (or a token, which was quarter-sized). And, even younger, when my grandpa would give me a quarter to get an ice-cream cone at Baskin-Robbins (and I could).
Here in Chester UK, it takes a one pound coin to liberate a Tesco shopping cart. So I keep one in my trouser pocket. About the only time I use cash these days.
I put a quarter in a mall candy machine a couple of weeks ago and got 4 M&Mos with peanuts. So I tried it again and got none. It was the only quarter machine in the mall, the rest required two quarters.
I sometimes have use for change, but not for a single quarter. Only a few years ago, a gallon of water was only 25 cents at the cheap place (whereas it used to be 25 cents at the expensive places.) Now, a gallon of filtered water is 40 cents at the cheap places. And the place I go to has two dispensers, and one of them doesn’t take credit cards, only change. I use change anyway because I am re-filling individual gallon containers instead of refilling a 3 or 5 gallon container, and I am paranoid that it would look weird to see 6 or so individual 40 cent charges on my credit card and/or I would be charged a service fee for them.
I can buy 12.5 minutes of parking. That’s why i still keep quarters in the car. Most places let me use an app now, too, but there’s a big surcharge for the app, and it takes longer than dropping a quarter in the slot. So if i just want to pop in and out, i use a quarter.
(If i want to park for an hour or more, i use the app.)
Not much use for a single quarter, but I do save any I get as change on the rare occasions when I pay with cash. They are needed for those times my wife and I take our camper out for a couple of weeks or so. Coin op laundries are still a thing, and we like to be prepared. A week’s worth of laundry will easily use up $5 - $7 worth of quarters to wash & dry.
My local coin op laundry finally started accepting credit cards. In fact, last time i went, i brought a stack of quarters and didn’t bring a card, and the guy working there started the laundry for me when it turned out the coin slot was jammed. I guess he figured it was an investment in my returning.
A quarter buys an hour of my son’s happiness. He’s been demanding a quarter from me, carrying it devotedly around with great joy, and then losing it. Last night he refused bedtime because he lost another damned quarter and wanted help finding it.
Today he asked me what a diamond was, so I showed him my grandmother’s diamond tennis bracelet.
He wanted to take it in his room for the night! No freaking way, kid. You can’t even keep track of a quarter.
I think those little 500ml bottles of water are a quarter from a vending machine at the Costco stores.
His tastes for shiny things is increasing in value.
Boy’s thinking like me. I’m distracted by sparkling things as well.
In South Africa, our 20c is less than useless. I can’t buy anything.
In Zimbabwe, there is no “quarter”, everything is US$ 1.00 or more. This is because the US$ is exported in paper format but coins are not.
It is insanely expensive as a result. I mean Trump whined about the cost of eggs, but in Zim just four tomatos sold at a roadside vendor would be US$ 1.00
I had people willing to buy my ZAR 1 coins! In a weird synergy, completely ignoring international markets, ZAR was the de facto “coin” and US$ the defacto “note” with 100 coins to a note.
This craziness might have changed, I have not been back for more than 8 years.
Unless they’re cherry tomatoes, that strikes me as pretty cheap.
I don’t know how incomes run there, though.
You can buy a dime, nickel, or penny with a quarter (assuming it doesn’t have numismatic value).
We beat Venezuela and Weimer Germany for records of inflation. Thousands of percent, eventually no one really kept track. I mean, I have a used 1 billion ZW$ note. It was so worthless that I picked it up in a ditch on the side of the road.
Someone had just tossed it, like any other piece of litter.