Euro coins: Which ones might be useful to have?
 

Am packing for a trip to central europe and found a bunch of Euro coins from an earlier trip.

2 euro, 1 euro, 50 cent, 20, etc

Please think about the last time you needed a Euro coin while traveling.
What denomination was it, and what did you use it for?

50C or 1 Euro coins would be most usefull. Depending on the country, one might need to pay 50c to use a public toilet, or if you'd need a shopping cart, those normally take 50c or 1 Euro.

I was really glad I had a €2 and a €0.20 coin at a tollbooth near Lyon recently when it rejected my credit card for the €2.20 toll.

Why would you not bring all your change? I have a little rubber coin purse that I load up with any destination-country coins and switch with my American coin purse en route. Any excess goes in a baggie for restocking — though I kept forgetting that last step on my recent trip and ended up bringing home way too much small change.

As noted, 50c coins for public toilets. Any coin below 50c has very little practical use. Just get rid of the shrapnel as soon as you can.

0.50, 1 and 2 euro

Coin lockers, supermarket trolleys, toilets, vending machines at train stations

Also some parking payment machines don't take bills or credit cards.

I would take the coins and try to spend them down, especially the 1-20 cents ones.

I like to have a few 1 and 2 euro coins to get metro tickets in Paris. Not all machines take bills, and not all credit cards work on the machines (though with chips that is getting better).

Note that some countries do rounding to nearest 0.05 (ams,Belgium , ...)

1 &2 cent are still legal tender and should be accepted (up to some limit like 50 coins/transaction)

€1 coins can be a lifesaver at some stations and regional airports if you need a luggage trolley. Particularly when the car hire centre is good walk away (yes, LRH, I'm looking at you...)

I've been to Europe 10+ times over the past 18 months and haven't used cash a single time

This is entirely possible in many European countries. If I lived in the UK, for example, I probably wouldn't even carry cash at all.

However, you would struggle in Germany or, to a lesser degree, Austria.

I've had copper coins rejected by shops in the Netherlands. I believe Finland is the same.

A lot of places in the Netherlands only accept cards issued by Dutch banks.

In the UK, on the other hand, I can make a £20 note last for well over a month. Can't spend my euro cent coins there, though.

1 and 2 cent coins are basically useless, most machines won’t even take them

50 cents and above are the most valuable but some machines will take 20 cents as well