HJCotton.net

I imagine everyone’s got some sort of container where they keep spare change. The coffee can I use took the better part of 3 years to fill up. I remember the horrors of wrapping coins manually as a kid, and the shoddiness in the plastic, battery operated contraption that was supposed to automatically divy up the change you poured in the top. The problem was, if you put more than 5 coins in at a time, the whole mechanism became jammed and you had to take all the coin containers out and shake the whole thing upside down to dislodge the quarters that apparently didn’t get the memo that the path to their holding bin was single file.

I’ve been considering Coinstar as an option for some time now, but their rather excessive 8.9% fee made manual wrapping look to be a better deal even with the tedious labor involved. But Coinstar also offers to give you a gift card to a few different retailers, including Amazon.com, without charging you a fee. Today, I decided to give it a go.

I opted to go to Price Chopper in Scranton. At first, I was afraid that the system would act like Price Chopper’s self-checkout registers, loudly blurting out “Do you have any coupons?… Is there anything under your cart?” so that even the most hearing impaired person can listen in on you even from the dairy section. Thankfully, it remained silent. I poured in my coffee can and started tipping in coins slowly. I’m very glad I did it at an off hour because, although I’m sure I overestimate the sound this machine makes, it does make quite a jingly-hum. I’d compare it to $80 in spare change rolling around in a dryer. It will certainly draw attention! I was reprimanded by the machine for feeding coins in too quickly, and as the rate of feeding increased, so did the number of rejections it spat out into a tray at the bottom. It didn’t like my corroded pennies, nor did it care for the ones I put down on a railroad track in upstate New York on a boring weekday afternoon. I ran them through again just to make sure, but apparently once a penny is turned into copper sheeting, it is (to quote Toby Keith) “not as good as it once was”.

Besides the awkwardness in carrying a large, overflowing coffee can of pennies through a crowded grocery store and shielding yourself from the curious stares of those in the checkout lines wondering what that god-awful racket is, this was a positive experience… and certainly beats wrapping coins; so long as you don’t mind getting a gift certificate instead of cash in order to save on fees.