I used to do that, but CoinStar no longer offers those around here.
A friend of mine said to me over twenty years ago “Save your change and spend it on Christmas.” So, I started saving my change but never spent much of it. Now I have over a grand in rolled coins.
I used to like to get dollar coins and two dollar bills at a bank to spend around Christmas just to annoy cashiers. The last time I tried to get some they said they charged a $5 service charge for non-customers (my credit union doesn’t have any). Maybe I should open an account with the change so I could get my dollars and twos without a charge!
It’s been a while since I’ve used a CoinStar. I guess I’ll have to check the machine at my grocery store to make sure I can still get a gift card.
Among the coins in my stash I’m sure I have a few dollar coins, a Kennedy half-dollar, and possibly an old Eisenhower dollar. I also have a few $2 bills tucked away.
Coinstar was my go-to choice for change conversion but they stopped offering Amazon cards. Bummer! It was so easy to take the code and add it to my gift card balance.
I switched over to using the cash/coin pay option at self-checkouts whenever I’ve accumulated more than a couple dollars worth of change. It’s a pain feeding the coins in practically one by one, but I’m not in any particular hurry and hey, it works.
Change gets tossed into a plastic cup.I used to get an Amazon credit from coinstar, but I have not seen that option lately. And by lately I mean in the last two or three years because the cup fills slowly.
My Credit Union went coinless a couple of years ago. The tellers will not accept coins or give them out. They did install a coin counting machine in the lobby. Swipe your debit card and the full value of the coins gets credited to your account.
I haven’t heard of many other credit unions going coinless, but it makes sense to me.
My credit union had a coin counting machine but it always seemed to be out of service. They got rid of it…guess they figured it wasn’t worth having one if it was broken all the time.
I tend to use cash for any purchase under $50 so I accumulate coins. When I get home for the day they go from my pocket into a small coffee can on my dresser.
I do keep a few dollars in quarters and nickels in my car for the decidedly old-school parking meters my town has. I also usually carry 3 or 4 dollar coins in my pocket in case the urge to visit the campus vending machines happens to strike.
The last time I checked out a CoinStar they charged something like 12% and did not offer gift cards. Not wanting to give them their pound of flesh, my coins just continue to accumulate.
Now I have several Illy coffee cans full of loose change in addition to the can on my dresser. I have two full of quarters, one full of dollars, one each of dimes, nickels, and pennies, and a couple full of random coins that are waiting to be separated. I have 15 or 20 Eisenhower dollars and maybe $50 in Kennedy half dollars.
The coin shortage during Covid has made me hesitant about getting rid of all my coins, but even then I didn’t have much use for them. This Christmas I’ll probably bite the bullet and use a CoinStar to exchange all those coins to get real money. Especially if I can find one that will give me a no-fee Amazon gift card.
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Before posting this I looked at the CoinStar website. The kiosks around here do not offer Amazon gift cards. They do offer hotels dot com, Home Depot and GameStop gift cards, the only ones that might be useful to me. To get cash they charge 12.9% plus a $0.99 “service fee.” (I hate that phrase. What it always means is “an excuse to fleece our customers.”)
I Googled “CoinStar” and “amazon” and confirmed that Amazon gift cards are no longer an option. Looking at the list of available gift cards the only ones that seem useful to me are DoorDash and Lowe’s.
I used to carry a handful of coins around in my pocket, but I realized that 99% of my transactions are debit / credit, so there’s no point anymore. One of the last places I used to commonly use them were the vending machines at work, but even those take cards now.
I do still often use cash at the farmers market; most vendors do accept cards now but many charge a transaction fee or require a minimum purchase. I think I said in another thread, I pretty much acquire coins on one market visit, and try to spend them on the next one. Many vendors seem to round their prices to the nearest quarter, thus that mostly what I get as change.
Sometimes when I go to the drive-thru at In-N-Out I will pay with exact change if I have it, specifically as a way to use up my coins. Unlike at say the supermarket checkout, I have time to count it out while waiting in the drive-thru line, and have it ready to go at the window, so I’m not holding up the line.
That’s a good idea – I didn’t realize you could pay partially with coins and the rest with a card. I just assumed it had to be either all cash or all on a card.
With the reduction in cash transactions, it seems like the CoinStar business model is becoming less viable. I’m guessing the machines will gradually disappear like the RedBox ones did. With banks doing things like removing coin counting machines and not taking coins, it may become harder to convert the coins to dollars. Someone with a horde of coins might want to think about if they want to convert them to dollars now or leave them as-is and have their heirs deal with it.
Three of our cars have coin holders for quarters, which we keep full for parking meters (less and less frequently), coin-op car washes (pretty common where we are still), or miscellaneous uses, so any quarters I acquire first go to re-stocking the cars if necessary. For surplus coins, I have a broken coin sorting machine on my dresser that I manually sort coins to store them. When I get enough for a roll, I roll them. Then I stash them in a drawer somewhere and forget about them for weeks or months until I get tired of accidentally running across them, by which time I may have $20-30 worth of rolled coins, which I’ll take to the bank and deposit.
I had a co-worker who would keep loose change in a beer stein on his desk. After coming back from coffee or lunch, he’d typically throw all the change into it. Any time we got to a particularly slow day, we would place wagers on how much was in the stein (usually eight to ten people, but sometimes as many as 15 or so), then he’d trot across the street to use the bank’s coin sorter. IIRC, we all kicked in a buck for the wager, and the closest to the total won the pot. One time, our big boss guessed exactly and won, and the rest of us demanded to see the receipt from the bank to make sure Chuck wasn’t just kissing Brent’s ass.
Over 21 years we accumulated a couple of jars of coins. Last spring I converted it into a -$80 Home Depot card which we promptly used up with spring planting purchases.
Since the we have accumulated just a few more coins. No more than a couple of dollars.
In the other thread, I had to check my wallet to see how much coinage I had. It was less than $2. And it’s probably been there for well over a year. I don’t get coins, and I don’t use them for anything except very rarely.
When my brother visits he always pays cash for everything which is mostly food he’s been craving that he can’t get in Costa Rica (mostly Mexican). When he leaves, he doesn’t take any of his change with him, and I started dumping it in a coffee mug. When it was full, I took it to the market for their coin machine that gave me a receipt to apply to my grocery bill.
I do have a little serpentine jar with foreign coins (and a 5 pound note) and an old silver dollar from the 1890s that an uncle gave me about 60 years ago.
Back in the day I had a ~quart jar & eventually filled it & took it to the bank, despite usually starting my day with some pocket change. Nowadays on the rare occasion I pay cash, if I get any coins I just leave them on the counter.
I used to keep a small stash of quarters in the car, but two cars ago I realized I’d stocked the stash when I got the car and never used any before I sold the car. No car stash now.
That is what my wife does when acting as our household’s procurement officer.
I think the car before this I was surprised that it no longer had a little door/holder where you could dump change - or other small objects. Sure, there are other places you can place change, but not as convenient as I recall from prior cars.
No need to worry - I’m talking about £1 coins (or perhaps 50 pence coins) as a tip.
I don’t bother with coins below 50 pence these days - just give them to charoty on the rare occasions I get them.
My mother started me on this: I use an empty (and clean) plastic medication bottle, the kind you get with a prescription. The best kind is a medium-sized bottle, not too narrow. Mine holds quarters easily and it lives in my knapsack. Easily replaceable too, but they don’t wear out much.
People actually remark on it a lot and think it’s a great idea. I always credit Mom.
I throw them into an old pail that once contained TJ’s cookies. When I get around to it, I roll them and deposit them into a savings account. When I was commuting three days a week, it collected coins quickly. Now that I only commute once a month, it doesn’t.