Money is tight at the moment so I went hunting around the house for loose change. I was interested to determine how accurate the Coinstar machines are, so I decided to count each denomination and record how much the grand total would be. I worked it out the the following.
| Coin | Quantity | Value | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarter | 274 | $68.50 | 1,553.58 g |
| Dime | 270 | $27.00 | 612.36 g |
| Nickle | 110 | $5.50 | 550.00 g |
| Penny | 649 | $6.49 | 1622.50 g |
| Total | 1303 | $107.49 | 4338.44 g |
That works out to roughly 4.3 kg and converts to just under 9.6 pounds. My nephew and I dumped all the coins into a bag and headed over to Wegmans to cash in/out. To get free coin counting, we looked at the different gift cards available, but did not find anything of interest. A gift card for the store we were in would have been perfect. We decided to get cash with a service charge of 8.9%.
All the numbers came up fine except for the dimes. It short changed me by 10 cents. My nephew had a dime with is spare change and threw it into the machine. With a service charge of 8.9%, we were able to get a coupon for 97.92. Great, I just paid eight cents for nothing since I’m getting 92 cents in change back. The cashier was a bit confused with our coupon. He entered it into the system, but the computer wouldn’t let him process it. I had noticed that the coupon stated that a manager signature was required. The manager who came by agreed with me and said that the cashier did everything correct.
When I got home, I started moving the original containers for each coin to the side of my desk. I noticed a rattling in one of the boxes and found the missing dime! I showed it to my nephew and he got a silly look on his face as I handed him the dime.