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Wrapping coins for fun and profit

I have a faux stone pot on the dresser, and this pot's sole purpose is to collect loose change. Every once in awhile it fills up, which means it's time to empty it out and see how much money has accumulated. And even though there are machines which will do all the sorting and counting for you now, I'm a traditionalist and prefer to do it the old-fashioned way — dump it all out on the floor, count and stack, and roll it up. It kills a little time and helps feed any latent (or obvious) OCD tendencies. And at the end, you've got money. How can you go wrong?

I've been meaning to do this for several months now and have been keeping my eyes open for some coin wrappers. I was apparently looking in the wrong places... they weren't as easy to find as I expected. I was also kind of hoping I'd happen across an old supply of them I had once upon a time so I wouldn't have to buy some. I don't remember where my old supply of coin wrappers came from, but I do remember it didn't cost me anything. Buying coin wrappers cuts into any gains you get from the act of wrapping, so the cheaper the better. But since I never found them, I ended up buying some — 48 for $1.49. I thought that was a pretty good deal. I figured I'd get maybe $20 out of the pot overall, and since Coinstar machines charge a fee of 8.9%, surely I'd still come out ahead by rolling my own (pun intended). Either way, the coin machines miscount often enough that I'd wonder if I got ripped off.

A little history about the coin rolling thing. I used to bank at a local rathole place in Beckley with exactly two branches. The branch most convenient to me employed a couple of tellers and one old man who I presume ran that branch. The old man was a douchebag, and he made sure to supervise every transaction, correcting the ones he didn't think were satisfactory. I once went in with several rolls of coins, thinking that since I banked there, they'd be more than happy to exchange them for paper currency or even deposit the funds to my account. Mr. Douchebag was there, of course, and intervened before anything even got started by saying, "We won't accept that silver."

This is the part where I'd like to say I told him to go fuck himself, but that didn't happen. Instead I tried to find out why coins were not valid at that particular branch, reasoning that it was still United States currency. And keep in mind, this was in an age before banks required your account number before you could even speak to a teller. But Mr. Douchebag said, "We don't accept it. You'll have to take it somewhere else." I did. I took it to the Kroger across the street, they exchanged it without even flinching, and they didn't even ask me to buy anything. And later that year, I closed my account at Douchebag National and moved all my money to a credit union. I'm still there seventeen years later.

(By the way, Mr. Douchebag, most coins are copper, nickel, and zinc. Silver hasn't been used since the 1960s.)

Anyway, after a round of rolling up my coins — most of which turned out to be pennies — I ended up with a grand total of six bucks. I figured out that most of the large denomination coins have gone into parking meters and school lunches. Still, six bucks is six bucks. I took my coin rolls to the credit union today and the teller handed me a $5 bill and a $1 bill in exchange. I also asked if they had any spare coin wrappers, because it turns out the 48 wrappers I bought had exactly twelve of each of the primary denominations (penny, nickel, dime, and quarter), and after exhausting all the penny wrappers and using none of the others at all, I was feeling a little ripped off. I also had some pennies left over and I knew I could squeeze another two bucks out of them, so I added that if they did have some coin wrappers, I'd prefer to have more penny wrappers than anything else since I apparently have more pennies than anything else. The teller disappeared for a minute, then returned with probably enough coin wrappers to last me until money goes completely digital and we all get chipped. Awesome service... exactly why I've stayed with them for seventeen years.

So I got my last two dollars in pennies all rolled up this evening, and I think I'm going to dump them next time I go through a toll booth on the WV Turnpike — exactly two dollars now despite what's reported on their website. I can't imagine why they wouldn't take them, unless Mr. Douchebag is now a toll collector.

Posted November 6, 2009 @ 23:49:31 EST. 0 comments.

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