Coinstar Machine

Yesterday, I did something for the first time ever.

I used a Coinstar machine.

For some reason, I have always enjoyed the masochistic activity known as coin rolling. It must have been the sheer surprise that a bag of coins could be worth anything significant.

The silver bullet is always the dime. Dimes are paper thin and on a value per ounce basis, I would imagine that they worth more than quarters. I always underestimate their overall contribution to a pile of coins.

Even with the convenience of Coinstar, I was never too keen on giving up 8.9% of my stack for their counting service, ignoring the fact that my time spent counting a bag of, say, $100.00 in change is indeed worth more than $8.90.

But yesterday, I remembered that Coinstar waived the 8.9% fee if I elected to convert my coins into a gift card toward purchases at one of their partner merchants. Those merchants include a bunch of places I regularly shop, so I figured this was a perfectly adequate arrangement.

Not to mention that it's time to head back on tour and rock out again, as I was about to place an order on Amazon.com for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (to be released next week), and didn't feel like charging it.

I ended up converting just enough coins with Amazon.com for the game, and then distributed the remainder between itunes and Starbucks.

Final tally:

$53.37 Amazon.com
$53.87 itunes
$36.21 Starbucks
_______________

$143.45 of coins no longer sitting in a Ziploc bag back home