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Comment by GeekyBear | Hacker News Reader

If the Fed would put Coinstar type machines in Post Offices without charging a fee or taking a cut, I think they would find a lot more people who are willing to get their coins back into circulation.

It would have to be cheaper on an ongoing basis than constantly minting coins.

Wrapping coins and exchanging them at a bank is just too tedious and time consuming.

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A large number of banks have coin machines inside that will take unrolled coins and deposit them into your account for free. Coinstar unfortunately largely targets people that don't have bank accounts.

Banks I used back in the midwest growing up always had change machines and it was a routine to bring in our change whenever the container got full, they'd turn it into cash or deposit it free of charge.

It seems way less common in CA, at least according to my experience.

I've deposited loose coins at a couple of Wells Fargo branches in San Francisco, they had counting machines behind the counter.

Pro tip: Coinstar wont take a cut if you get it as a gift card. The times I've used them I just opt for an Amazon Gift card or one for the local grocery chain that I'm already going to be spending money at.

That's great for Amazon, and for people who shop at Amazon...

Right, so > 75% of online shoppers...

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/19/more-than-75-percent-of-us-o...

That's, uh, taking a cut, albeit a smaller one. You'll lose the cashback or other rewards that you would've gotten for using a credit card. Gift cards can also commonly be obtained for under face value.

If you don't have a bank account then it is a good deal to change for free. I doubt those without a bank account have credit cards with good cashback deals.

Where does Coinstar's cut come from then? Wouldn't they be giving back the same amount you put in?

They probably get a referral fee from Amazon or whoever redeems the gift card.

Giftcards are typically sold to retailers at a discount (i.e. Amazon sells $100 gift cards for $95 or something).

no, the machine takes the cut by giving you back less than you put in

But spending coins doesn't give you cash back rewards either.

Yup. Last year I got rid of a whole bunch of coins that were lying around. I took it as a gift card for the local hardware, then went over to the hardware and spent the money.

Not anymore since many got sued a few years ago for being inaccurate or simply costing too much to maintain. Your bank should provide coin sleeves for free, though rolling them manually can be a hassle.

See here for more info: https://www.mybanktracker.com/news/coin-counting-machines-ba...

Banks can't take pre-rolled coins. They have to break them and recount.

This depends on the bank. I've had no trouble exchanging pre-rolled coins for bills at Bank of America.

Ya know, that’s what I would’ve thought as well, but a year or two ago Chase Bank refused to take my loose change. They sent me away with the paper to roll the coins myself to bring back to them

once upon a time, they would take them if you signed the roll and wrote your account number on it.

I had the opposite experience. Big Bank would not take my loose coins but happily gave me paper tubes and accepted the rolls a couple days later.

That was my experience as well. It’s all odd because coins can be accurately weighed if the denomination is separated.

Often separating the coins isn’t necessary either. Because the value of a coin was historically the value of the metal it contained, many modern coin sizes still have a volume proportional to their value. US dimes, quarters, half dollars, and the old Eisenhower dollar coins are all $20/lb, for instance.

lb is a unit of force, not volume.

On earth they readily convert. The size (historically) was determined by the volume needed to get that much mass. At one time payment was measured in weight as you could never trust the other person (or the person who fooled them) to not mix some less valuable metal on with their coins. Those days are mostly gone but the history is weight (which on earth is the same as mass) is important not volume.

Hence the partially empty cereal boxes and snack bags which sell by weight but package to maximize visual perceived volume. I still recall the disappointment as a kid when I got a new box of cereal only to see that a huge portion was "already gone".

> You could never trust the other person (or the person who fooled them) to not mix some less valuable metal on with their coins

Another major problem was people taking shavings from the edge of coins and trying to pass them off as unaltered; it's the reason many coins have some kind of pattern imprinted around the edge.

They readily convert with half a percent of slack between different locations. So be careful calibrating your scale.

And that's today's at-home experiment with the kid locked in!

I've had the opposite experience like the person you're replying to. They wouldn't accept rolled coins, I guess because they have to break them to recount anyhow. And it's easier to commit fraud.

The last time I tried to deposit pre-rolled coins, the bank told me I could only deposit a maximum number per visit w/o a coin counting fee, and that number was really low.

Now when I'm dealing with a lot of cash transactions & the coins are piling up, I just keep them with me, and make sure to spend them when I can. Or I donate them to a charity box.

It really comes down to cost. Managing change, and cash in general is a huge time and risk bucket, so some banks eat the cost, and some pass it on to you directly through fees or hoops to jump. Most branches removed individual branch coin counters for the larger banks, using centralized processing places to manage coins. Smaller banks may distribute more load to branches by having machines in larger branches or making customers roll.

But yes, the lawsuits raised the risk profile of in-branch machines so away they went in most cases. And so did dealing with massive, heavy bags of coins, which are much harder to move than they appear from bank heist movies.

TD Bank was esp. loved by kids... but also lawyers, as it was a great story to tell: kids losing their hard won pennies through a miscounting machines, and since the machines only undercounted, "gasp, must be malicious evil banks again after our money". After multiple suits, bye bye to the machines, and bye bye to yet another way to teach folks that saving can be fun, even if it's less fun than spending.

Yes, stealing money is bad, even if a corporation does it.

This is interesting. I have less then fond child hood memories of rolling pennies so we could take them to the bank.

Insanely boring activity.

The Fed's stated goal is to create jobs, not destroy them.

> The Fed's stated goal is to create jobs, not destroy them.

That’s not true. Here’s the truth: https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed.htm

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/what-economic-goals-does...

    The Congress has directed the Fed to conduct the nation's monetary policy to support three specific goals: 

 * maximum sustainable employment,
 * stable prices, and 
 * moderate long-term interest rates. 

   These goals are sometimes referred to as the Fed's "mandate."  [hn formatting added]

Thank you. My mistake, not sure how I missed that word!

I think they are referring to quantitative easing.

Right there in your link:

> conducts the nation’s monetary policy to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates in the U.S. economy;

(Emphasis mine)

Every single bullet that follows either restates the first bullet or is tertiary.

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