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 Replies: 9 / Views: 1,649 |
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New Member
United States
2 Posts |
I tried buying a coin sorter off Amazon that got "OK" reviews ( http://www.amazon.com/Royal-Soverei...#043;counter, but more often than not the top of the tube is either 1 or 2 short or heavy. I tried weighing them, but obviously (at least the pennies) differed too much to get a consistent weight. Aside from hang counting, is there something I can do to either easily verify the counts, or a machine that's not ridiculously priced that will actually count to know when a sleeve is full? Thanks in advance for any information!! Edited by skoehler
07/28/2015 04:42 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Unfortunately, if you want excellent accuracy, you'll have to pay for it. I can let other members weigh in, but I have yet to hear of a <$200 counter that works as well as the machines owned by Brinks and the like. They certainly can't handle large quantities with any real efficiency.
What are you hoping to use it for? Personally, I would recommend that you pull and use or roll your quarters by hand, and take the rest to a Coinstar for a no-fee gift card. Even if you were to get cash from the machine, it would take $385 before the coinstar fee would exceed the cost of the sorter.
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New Member
 United States
2 Posts |
Thanks for the response. This is for a change bin that generally collects $200-300 maybe twice a year. My bank is based out of state, so I have no local branch I can just bring it into (I've had friends and family do this, but it's a hassle). I just want to make sure that if I'm rolling coins, the counts are accurate.
A couple questions then:
1) Are pennies really the only coins that differ drastically in weight? I guess I could deal with hand counting those. But for the others I have a scale that goes to I think .01g accuracy. Out of 4 tests with quarters, each test consisting of short 2, short 1, even, +1, and +2, the same counts were all within 1g of each other (changing out quarters for each round) for 3 out of the 4 tests. That 4th test was consistently several grams off for each -2,-1,e,+1,+2 test vs. the others of same counts.
2) Should I care if I bring rolls that are one coin heavy or 2 short to some random bank I walk into? They'll just give them back to me, right? That wouldn't be a huge deal, unfortunately with the machine I linked above, my first 4 tries were all off by at least one.
I don't see the value in a $200+ sorter when I'm only scraping $300-$400 out of this thing a year. On the contrary however, my family plays a lot of nickel/dime/quarter poker, and I'd love at times to just eliminate and roll the pennies from my container.
As for the coin machine - I've seen it at the grocery store (not sure what ours is called), but never used it. Don't they take a pretty significant cut?
Anyhow, hope that helps explain better what I'm trying to do. I greatly appreciate any further feedback. At the moment I'm glad I didn't return this machine for a $180 one I saw if that might be just as bad.
Edited by skoehler
07/28/2015 3:02 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
513 Posts |
The coin machine at your grocery store likely is a CoinStar machine. yes, if you want to have coins counted and traded in for cash, it will take 8-10% (yech!). But if you choose an egift card instead, you do not have to pay a percentage--if you have $200 in coins, you get a $200 egift card. I select Amazon, because I buy stuff from Amazon anyway. There are other egift card options (Amazon, AMC Theaters, Applebee's, Bass Pro Shops, Best Buy, Build-a-Bear, Chili's Cold Stone Creamery, Forever 21, GameStop, GapOptions, Home Depot, IHOP, iTunes, Lowes, Nike, Red Robin, Regal, Sears, Sephora, Sports Authority, Southwest Airline, Staples, Starbucks, Toys-R-Us). And by "egift card," I just get a slip of paper with a code that I enter into my Amazon account and it gives me dollar credits equal to the value of coins I had counted to use when buying stuff from Amazon. You can find out more about the CoinStar thing on their website. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
513 Posts |
I have never tested CoinStar by pre-counting my coins and then having the machine count them. But it is "roughly" accurate, from my guesstimates. Nonetheless, I have had some one cent coins counted as ten cent coins, so there is not perfect accuracy. {grin} But it's easy and close enough.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Ahh, yes that does explain.
I would personally say your best option in this scenario would be to stick with the one you have and accept the +/- 2g variance. Most banks shouldn't care if an occasional roll is a coin short, as long as it averages out in the end. Just ask the branch manager to contact you with any concerns regarding the rolls you are turning in.
As far as the reason for the variance, have you checked the bin for foreign coins? Canadian coins enter circulation in the US all the time. They are usually pulled, since all recent Canadian coins are made out of steel or nickel and will stick to a magnet. Cheap counters go by size alone, so your rolls might actually be filled with foreign coins. The Mint has some tolerance regarding coin weight, but all non-cent coins should be within a few tenths of a gram from the "official" unless you are getting heavier silver coins in your bin.
Counters do vary depending on brand. Coinstar "recommends" a 13% fee for cash conversion, but store managers are free to adjust. There are other brands that charge anywhere from 5%-15%. I generally consider that to be worthwhile for cents and nickels, but not for higher denominations.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
You might try doing what the mint did for counting coins up until the 1930's, a coin board. Of course you can't buy one you'd have to make it, but they used to be able to count an entire 5000 coin cent bag in just 3 or 4 minutes.
Of course a coin board only counts coins it doesn't sort them.
Edited by Conder101
07/28/2015 6:07 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3546 Posts |
 to CCF skoehler Also, keep in mind that if you try looking at the length of a 'paper-wrapped' roll as a criteria for the maintaining the correct number of pennies per roll; the occasional bent penny or two would skew the results somewhat. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
The problem with using roll length for counting is because the coins stack rim to rim and the thickness at the edge can vary considerably due to strike quality (and somewhat from wear as well). A roll of new well struck coins can easily be about "two coins longer" compared to a roll of average strikes. This can also vary between mints. Back when the State Quarter first became popular there were a lot of comments about how the Denver rolls were longer tha the Philadelphia rolls even though they both had the same number of coins. It was because the Denver coins were better struck with thicker edges. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
I actually used the stacking method to quickly count a large quantity of copper cents that I was buying from a neighbor at face value. I counted out one stack of 10, lined up the rest of my stacks to ensure that they were even with the first, and checked myself after every 10 stacks. Took about 20 minutes to count out 2,000ish cents and none of my check stacks were ever short or over. Of course these were all circulated, 30-50 year old coins and not fresh strikes of mixed composition.
There may be a more mathematically perfect way to count the coins, but for converting a mass amount of loose coin into cash, I would say that a 2 coin tolerance isn't anything to be concerned about for cents, nickels, and dimes. Most cashiers are given a $5-10 tolerance on their tills before facing disciplinary action--your cent roll could have $0.48 or $0.52 and nobody would notice.
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Replies: 9 / Views: 1,649 |
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Posted 07/28/2015 2:54 pm
