LaineT
Money for nothing, drugs (and books!) for free
Okay, so...as anyone who knows me knows--my house has a lot of stuff in it. That includes coins. What to do, what to do? I was stumped until lifehacker passed along a neat little tip. You can use those big green Coinstar machines at the Giant Eagle without incurring the 8.9% (bastards!) coin counting fee if you get your money back in a gift card to Starbucks, Amazon, or a host of other cool places.
With visions of free coffee until I was thirty dancing in my head, I set out to turn some coin into some coffee. The first picture is the coins before I organized them. Dante is there to be cute and add scale. As you can see, some are wrapped. A misguided attempt to be organized two or three years ago resulted in a big pink tub of wrapped coins with my account number on them sitting around my house. So, I unwrapped them (my shredder's gonna be busy tonight), and put them in those plastic storage boxes you can buy at Kmart, as you can see in the middle photo. Dante just had to get in the shot again, didn't she?
So this morning, I wake up bright and early, try not to give myself a hernia taking those containers out to my car--lift with your legs, remember!--and head off to the Center Avenue Giant Eagle. I loaded the containers into a shopping cart, and wheeled it to the big green machine.
Where I would spent the next hour.
I hit "Starbucks Gift Card" (it said something about a $400 limit, but pshaw, I thought--I'd never get it to that) and started dumping coins. The Coinstar machine was suprisingly strong--I was convinced that I would break it, but I would imagine that it's probably seen a lot in its time. If you listen very closely while you dump your coins, it makes tiny little "kaCHING" sounds--very attractive. It was like Vegas in reverse!
At one point it stopped, and I thought for sure I had broken it and would spend the rest of my days wandering from Giant Eagle to Giant Eagle, with my blue and pink plastic containers, like a coin-carrying gypsy. Nope--"My you have a lot of coins!" said the screen--"Please wait while I catch up!" This was accompanied by a cute little graphic of the Coinstar machine sweating. SWEATING. I am not making this up. The coins it didn't take (some Australian and Mexican coins that got gathered up by accident) came out in a nice little slot at the bottom, and I stuck them in the blue container.
It was a very satisfying experience--some ladies walked by and said "She's been saving up for awhile!" Yeah, try 23 years, ladies. Another woman came up to me and inquired whether I "owned that machine." I can't imagine why I would be feeding money into a machine that I owned--like my name is Laine Coinstar or something. Maybe she thought I was a plant; like, a model designed to go into stores and get you to use the Coinstar by making it look really fun. Well, it WAS really fun. And I was really happy. I may have even danced a little at the end.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The pennies hit the 4,000 mark, and things started adding up. At 402 dollars, I thought I should stop, since I was over my Starbucks card limit. I figured I'd just give the rest to charity or something. Besides, I still had half of the pink container left. So I hit "done," waiting for my free coffee to be presented to me. Oh, but it was not to be. "You do not qualify for the Starbucks Gift Card because you are over the $400 limit," snarled the Coinstar machine. Crap. CRAP.
Luckily enough, I qualified for an Amazon gift card. The limit there was $1000. Two hours before this, I couldn't imagine someone having $1000 worth of coins in their house. Now, I could definitely see it. I probably would have gone over the Amazon limit if I'd waited a few years.
So, I got my Amazon money, and then focused on the Starbucks card again, vowing that I wouldn't make the same mistake. It turned out okay--I got my Starbucks card as well. The photo is blurry, but the total was: Amazon--$405.49, and Starbucks--$230.30.
Just a bit more: here
Money for nothing, drugs (and books!) for free
Okay, so...as anyone who knows me knows--my house has a lot of stuff in it. That includes coins. What to do, what to do? I was stumped until lifehacker passed along a neat little tip. You can use those big green Coinstar machines at the Giant Eagle without incurring the 8.9% (bastards!) coin counting fee if you get your money back in a gift card to Starbucks, Amazon, or a host of other cool places.
With visions of free coffee until I was thirty dancing in my head, I set out to turn some coin into some coffee. The first picture is the coins before I organized them. Dante is there to be cute and add scale. As you can see, some are wrapped. A misguided attempt to be organized two or three years ago resulted in a big pink tub of wrapped coins with my account number on them sitting around my house. So, I unwrapped them (my shredder's gonna be busy tonight), and put them in those plastic storage boxes you can buy at Kmart, as you can see in the middle photo. Dante just had to get in the shot again, didn't she?
So this morning, I wake up bright and early, try not to give myself a hernia taking those containers out to my car--lift with your legs, remember!--and head off to the Center Avenue Giant Eagle. I loaded the containers into a shopping cart, and wheeled it to the big green machine.
Where I would spent the next hour.
I hit "Starbucks Gift Card" (it said something about a $400 limit, but pshaw, I thought--I'd never get it to that) and started dumping coins. The Coinstar machine was suprisingly strong--I was convinced that I would break it, but I would imagine that it's probably seen a lot in its time. If you listen very closely while you dump your coins, it makes tiny little "kaCHING" sounds--very attractive. It was like Vegas in reverse!
At one point it stopped, and I thought for sure I had broken it and would spend the rest of my days wandering from Giant Eagle to Giant Eagle, with my blue and pink plastic containers, like a coin-carrying gypsy. Nope--"My you have a lot of coins!" said the screen--"Please wait while I catch up!" This was accompanied by a cute little graphic of the Coinstar machine sweating. SWEATING. I am not making this up. The coins it didn't take (some Australian and Mexican coins that got gathered up by accident) came out in a nice little slot at the bottom, and I stuck them in the blue container.
It was a very satisfying experience--some ladies walked by and said "She's been saving up for awhile!" Yeah, try 23 years, ladies. Another woman came up to me and inquired whether I "owned that machine." I can't imagine why I would be feeding money into a machine that I owned--like my name is Laine Coinstar or something. Maybe she thought I was a plant; like, a model designed to go into stores and get you to use the Coinstar by making it look really fun. Well, it WAS really fun. And I was really happy. I may have even danced a little at the end.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The pennies hit the 4,000 mark, and things started adding up. At 402 dollars, I thought I should stop, since I was over my Starbucks card limit. I figured I'd just give the rest to charity or something. Besides, I still had half of the pink container left. So I hit "done," waiting for my free coffee to be presented to me. Oh, but it was not to be. "You do not qualify for the Starbucks Gift Card because you are over the $400 limit," snarled the Coinstar machine. Crap. CRAP.
Luckily enough, I qualified for an Amazon gift card. The limit there was $1000. Two hours before this, I couldn't imagine someone having $1000 worth of coins in their house. Now, I could definitely see it. I probably would have gone over the Amazon limit if I'd waited a few years.
So, I got my Amazon money, and then focused on the Starbucks card again, vowing that I wouldn't make the same mistake. It turned out okay--I got my Starbucks card as well. The photo is blurry, but the total was: Amazon--$405.49, and Starbucks--$230.30.
Just a bit more: here