Previously, I wrote about my father giving my daughters almost 70 pounds of quarters.
After a bit of thought on how to cash them in, I realized that I was going the CES Show in Las Vegas and that if there is one place in the world that can handle 70 pounds of quarters, it's Las Vegas. I called the hotel I was going to stay at and asked if they would cash the quarters. "No problem sir! Bring any kind of money you want and we'll handle it for you at the Cashier!" Sweet, I was in business.
I made arrangements with Brad to drive to Vegas together and haul the coffee cans of quarters to the desert. To move the quarters around, I brought a set of luggage wheels and tied the cans to it.
After lugging the quarters into the hotel, I made my way to the cashier as Brad took photos. At first, the cashier said she didn't want to cash the quarters. After I told her about my earlier phone call, she reluctantly agreed and began dumping the quarters into the coin counter. She had to change the plastic bag that holds the counted quarters three times.
Brad tried to take a photo of the actual coin counting but the cashier freaked out. I watched with glee as the count rose and went well over a thousand dollars.
As you remember, my rough estimate was $1,360 in quarters.
After all the quarters were counted, the total was $1,315.70.
Holy crap, that's a lot of money.
The money will be split for the girls to invest for college. By 2014 when Zoe starts college, her $650 might buy a single textbook.
Posted by michael at January 12, 2006 11:16 PMIs now a bad time to tell you that Coinstar will now count your coins and they will return their service as an amazon.com gift certificate for you?
Posted by: Mister P. [http://misterp.blogspot.com] on January 13, 2006 12:11 AMI'm still trying to figure out how a bunch of quarters totaled $1,315.70. It sounds to me like they gipped you out of a nickel. ;-)
Posted by: Manda [http://www.jenesaisoz.com] on January 13, 2006 1:36 AMI was thinking the same thing Manda.
Posted by: LittleKenny [http://littlekenny.com] on January 13, 2006 6:43 AMWhy didn't you just go to a bank? I hear they have some experience in dealing with money there.
Posted by: BillB [http://squidly.com] on January 13, 2006 7:38 AMTo answer your questions:
Coinstar takes 9% of the change they count as a fee. 9% of the quarters is almost $120 to lose.
Banks require you to roll your quarters before turning them in. That would have meant rolling 131 rolls of quarters.
The 70ยข is probably the result of 4 nickels being in the with the quarters. The change counters in Vegas are tested by the gaming commission and probably trustworthy. I must say that only 4 nickels out of 5266 coins is an astounding 0.019% error rate for coin sorting.
Posted by: Michael [http://cruftbox.com] on January 13, 2006 9:30 AMHrmm...the banks here (in South Jersey, anyway) have change counting machines in the lobby. You dump your change in and it gives you a receipt that you bring to the counter for your cash.
The machine is blazing fast, and kind of fun too.
Posted by: BillB [http://squidly.com] on January 13, 2006 10:55 AMNo... You no longer lose the Coinstar fee. You would get the $120 as an Amazon gift certificate, which I'm sure you would use anyway. There may be a maximum amount you can cash in with Coinstar in one day, and it is kind of fun to walk around a casino with all the coins and cash, but the Coinstar fee should no longer be as big an issue.
Posted by: Mister P. [http://misterp.blogspot.com] on January 13, 2006 2:10 PMIt made for a way better story taking it to Vegas though. And look at him flashing all them Benjamins. ;)
Posted by: Little Kenny [http://littlekenny.com] on January 16, 2006 9:02 AM