Not So Rare Coins and My Adventure with Coinstar

When did banks stop taking coins? I nearly dislocated my shoulder hauling coins to redeem for light-weight cash. I went to my bank where a kind teller told me they no longer had a coin machine and directed me to what she called, “the neighborhood bank”  across the street, (I’m sure her branders wouldn’t love that, but in the land of Marshall Fields and his motto of “Give the lady what she wants” it worked for me.) 

Unfortunately, though they had a coin machine, because I didn't have an account they would change me 5%.  Yikes. No thank you. That teller directed me to the Coinstar Machine located at the Jewel grocery store. I headed there with my painfully heavy bag o’ money and in the back of my head, a thought that it would be a rip off too, but I wanted to check it out.

Hoisting the bag onto my other shoulder I found the machine wide open and the Coinstar maintenance man taking it apart. I shopped for his suggested ten minutes and learned that I should shop there more often for fish if I want to save money. Anyway.

I had salmon in hand and my money now in a cart where a toddler would sit. I wondered if carts had weight limits. The money weighed about a sixth grader. By the time I got back to the Coinstar machine, the guy was spritzing and polishing it. He closed it up and nodded toward the nicely cleaned and maintained machine. It was the nod of the cowboy sheriff Longmire. As he sauntered away, I read the directions on a video screen.

Pour money there. I did. I was glad I culled it and taken out all the foreign coins, buttons and bottle caps and separated the coins in three separate bags. You are instructed to put the money on a grid that looks like a siv, lift the handle and guide the money into the slot. I’d poured in so many coins I couldn’t see the slot. It reminded me of a paper shredder and just like those, it stopped every now and then, but better than a shredder, it made encouraging comments. "My, you have a lot of coins, wait till we catch up." The machine was noisy in a very satisfying way. Money dropped and clinked and sifted. The screen counted its progress, the amount and the number of coins by denomination. I happened to put in a bag of pennies first so the amount built with lots of noise but slowly. I poured dimes on top and the amount multiplied, well, ten times per coin. Cool. Then I added the huge bag predominantly filled with quarters and nickels as well as a few pennies and dimes that I’d tossed in from a stash I found at the last minute. In all, $187.36 to strain my clavicle, not bad, though I didn’t get cash.

Instead, I learned that I could choose. To take cash meant paying a 9% rate… whoa! Nearly double the bank's rate. I learned for no fee, I could get a gift card. I looked through the list of stores. There were loads of options, but none where I plan to spend that much cash in the near future. I chose the non-store-retailer, Amazon. Once I did, the machine printed out a receipt with a secret transaction number which I immediately redeemed as a gift card for my account. The money has no expiration date. It doesn't generate interest like it might if I put cash in a bank. Oh well. It’s now there to fund those one-click purchases I seem to make for my Kindle just before getting on a plane, or the new Justin Bieber album - just kidding.   

Coinstar didn’t exact a pound of flesh as I expected. I actually liked the experience. As I think about it, that amount of cash accumulated since I moved in 2011. By the time I am ready to redeem a bag of coins again, they will probably be extinct. Also, let me say right now, I am not going to help anyone go through their coins unless I get 25%. It is a thankless, tedious task.

In a subsequent post, I'll explain my new relationship with five dollar bills. They are much lighter and better than saving quarters, except there's no satisfying ting-dinging of the metal sifter. I will survive.