NoStressHere

We have been throwing all our change into the drawer for years. They have those coin machines at some stores but they usually want to charge you 9% to cash in the coins. Just noticed the one at our Walmart will spit out Southwest Gift Cards with non fee. Had close to $200 dumped in, got a ticket with card number. Just booked a flight - bingo!

YMMV

Peoriaman1

No fee eh? That sweetens it I think.

I save coins but only pennies. I probably have 200 pounds in pennies....

czpdx

You can usually get Amazon gift cards for no fee, too. Coin Star machines, right?

kennycrudup

This has been around for a while; I remember doing this nearly a decade ago.

joshua362

I saved ALL coins in a 6 gallon water jug starting in the 80's when cash was pretty much used for everything. After 20 years, it finally filled at 185 pounds. By weight it was 38% pennies, 16% nickles, 10% dimes and 36% quarters. I thought I was staring at a small fortune and possibly a down payment on a small airplane. It came to a measly $1,997 (and I found a no fee bank coin counter to boot)

Now in the rare instance I receive coins, I save the quarters in a much smaller jug and toss the rest. Pennies at $1.82 per pound will just not amount to that much...

OzzyOzzie

My bank has a free coin counter for customers so I do not use coinstar. I think the WN ecard has been an option for quite a few years. I check the ecard options after I check the reject slot out as every now and then there be silver coins or a ton of change in it. Best haul last year was just under $18(how does no one notice that many coins being rejected!) and for silver 3 silver dimes and 2 silver quarters.

To keep this on topic for the forum, WN still limits the number of gift cards you can use for booking correct? IE, you would not want a bunch of $10 - $15 WN ecards so you would be better off until you have a lot of loose change.

roundtree

Yes, but you can combine them through book/cancel cycles with travel funds. It would be more trouble than it's worth, to me.

NoStressHere

This was a Coin Star - no amazon but it did offer Starbucks.

Around for awhile - yes - but the fee free options have changed over time.

ursine1

The free gift card options do change occasionally. But almost always include Starbucks and Amazon, and very frequently Southwest.

More problematic is getting any gift card at all, since it requires a working internet connection. Coinstar machines are notorious for being out of order (of verying severity), and the host establishment has no control over them. The upside being that, at many places, if you choose "gift card" but the machine is unable to connect to host, you can get cash for no fee.

Peoriaman1

Cash is good. As long as it doesn't take my pennies and leave me high and dry.

toomanybooks

ursine1

At some grocery stores, older Coinstar machines use a regular phone cord to connect their modems to the internet, which can sometimes become unplugged accidentally, but only after the coin counting process has begun (with gift card selected).

Newer machines use cell signal.

WillCAD

The WN gift card is a nice option, but it's also a good idea to check your own bank for a counting machine. Many banks and credit unions offer coin counting machines for free; the value of the counted coins is usually deposited into your account as cash rather than converted to a gift card.

Personally I never let my coins build up that far. I have a 4-tube organizer and use it to sort my coins each night when I get undressed. Every week or two one of the tubes fills up enough to make one roll; I roll it and put the roll aside, and when I want to cash in, I just take the rolls to my bank and deposit them or convert them to cash at the teller. Very little work, very little time investment, maximum financial benefit.

This is the one I use. It's not automatic, but since I drop my pocket change in every night, I rarely have to deal with more than a couple of bucks worth of coins at any given moment. Only cots me seven bucks back in 1992, so it's more than paid for itself over the years.



Of course, there are plenty of other types of sorters on the market, some motorized, some gravity fed, some automatic, some manual, so choosing something else is always an option.

joshua362

To quote Ryan Bingham from "Up in the Air", "I don't spend a dime unless it somehow benefits my mileage account".

For me, cash is so rare and I can go on weeks long trips only using singles (or my few remaining dollar coins) for hotel and airport tips!

Getting coins back is even rarer. In the eighties I'd come home from NYC with a pocket full daily. Sign of the times I guess.

kennycrudup

What Joshua said ... there's been times I've traveled to the East Coast with ~$40 in my pocket and come back with ~$30, only using any cash to tip the valet at my hotel on the last day. I used to have a big jar that would get dumped every few months, but lately it's been a mason jar about half full after a year.