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I've never understood the allure of Coinstar... you pay close to 10% to have this machine count your money for you. I have a jar at home that probably has close to $200 in change in it and yeah, it'll take some time to count but I'd rather do that then lose $20 of it.
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@wchamilton: I do the Amazon gift card thing as well. There are some household items that I can't buy anywhere near where I live, so I buy them from Amazon. Plus, I've looked around, and I can't find anywhere to buy coin wrappers and all the banks around here now use machines that wrap their coins in plastic, so they don't have paper wrappers on hand to give out.
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@wchamilton: Unless you have a machine that will automatically roll them up for you most banks won't take change... so for some people its the only option. A small fee isn't that bad - especially when you're only counting ~$20 in change.
@Oranges w/ Cheese wants it to be winter already: Or you can hand roll them but yeah most banks require rolled coins. Personally I count them, but I also don't collect a lot of change.
@Oranges w/ Cheese wants it to be winter already: I think Commerce/whatever their name is this week is still free. But I recommend counting before hand. Last time I went they were off by like $1.34, and they gave me the difference because I had the figure written down and also deducted what the machine had spit out. I also keep copper/zinc in one jug, and silver in the other, for ease of counting. Pennies I do by weight and silver I count by stack.
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@GitEmSteveDave_OverSleptThisMorn: Commerce, TD, some Capital Ones, all have coin counters.
My local capital one is free for accountholders, or an 8% fee for the public. Beats coinstar, though the lines are longer.
The allure: Convenience, convenience, and convenience. Just haul that big jar o' coins into your local supermarket and walk out with crisp green dollahs. For many, it's worth the service fee not to have to manually put their coins in rolls. My kids love using it. They have some weird phobia about adding change to bills when they buy stuff (e.g., paying a $10 bill and 22 cents in coins when their total is $8.22). So they get tons of change in return, and keep it until they have enough to warrant a Coinstar trip.
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@wchamilton: Agreed, and I wouldn't have posted it except that Coinstar no longer charges a fee if you convert your change to a gift card. So, if you were planning on spending your change at (for example) Amazon in the first place, now it's not a money-losing solution to use Coinstar.
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@Chris Walters: That's what we do. We dump all of our change into Coinstar and get it in Amazon vouchers. It's extremely wonderful because we buy off Amazon a lot. We just found a bag of at least $100 in change sitting in the bottom of a closet, so we'll have to make a Coinstar run soon. I love coin sorting, it's a little geeky.
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As a public service announcement I would like everyone to know that Unlisted shows are usually of very poor quality and are much less likely than other brands to be comfortable.
So at $15 you will get what you pay for.
@Eustace Silly: Yeah, they are very much fashion over function.
@Eustace Silly: So you're saying the Phantom wouldn't recommend them? This upset Scrappy Coco.
@Eustace Silly: I agree. I've never liked Unlisted shoes (though I've obviously only tried the women's shoes). Comfort is subjective, but the quality is indeed very low.