Teresa and I had accumulated a gallon bucket full of coins over the last 10 years. We’ve been meaning to use one of those coin exchange machines we see at grocery stores, but we never got around to it until today. The machine we used was a CoinStar at Giant Eagle. It charged us 8.9% on cash we never would have been able to use otherwise… and after about 15 minutes of sliding coins into its maw, we walked away with almost $360. Excellent!
The design of the machine is straightforward and sturdy. A hefty metal basket takes a couple handfulls of coins at a time and slides them through a slot. At times, the slot closes to allow the counter to catch up, with a cute little My you have a lot of coins! message, but it shows you the accumulated total cash value and the counts of the different coins while it does its work. Very nicely done! You can also choose to donate the balance to charity if you’d prefer, or turn in the voucher for cash in the store where the machine is located.
