4 April 2011

Counting coins in Canberra?

| astrojax
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I am a member of a credit union. They don’t have a coin counting machine like the banks do / or used to have – and i don’t fancy establishing an account with a bank just to count a few jars of coins – but i do have these jars of coins i seem to have saved over a few years of not particularly trying.

I’m not keen on wrapping the things in paper tubes or filling myriad plastic bags with just the right number of the same coins.

Anyone know where i might get a machine (or someone other than me) to count them and exchange them for notes? Do the clubs with pokies have these, and could i use them if i didn’t win them on their machines?

Silly question, i know, but that’s me, huh?

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JessicaGlitter2:36 pm 14 Jul 14

I guess at the end of the day if you need this feature with your banking it must be time to shop around for someone that offers it. I pay a little extra in fees at Bendigo Bank but you never have to queue, you can support rural communities who all the big banks abandoned, you can rock up and ask dumb questions and they help, they won’t give you a loan or credit card you can’t afford, you can forget your password each and every time you go to do your online banking and they’ll reset it for you and yeah you can just rock up with a full moneybox and pour it in the machine.

Or you can take it to a cafe or little shop, goodness knows the staff and proprietor don’t relish the idea of having to walk down to the bank for a big heavy sack of change. Just take it during a quiet period like 3pm on a Monday afternoon and ask politely “Hey I’ve got all this change, do you want some?” If it’s at least kinda sorted into coins of a denomination then they’ll count it out for you quicksmart just as they do when they set the day’s float and balance up at the end. Pop a few in the tip jar to say thanks. 😉

Captain RAAF2:22 pm 14 Jul 14

CBA Tuggeranong have a coin counting machine and you don’t need to be an account holder.

Keep your 5c pieces tho, they are worth 6 cents each in raw material. I have hundreds of the bloody things I’m saving for buyback in 10 years, I’ll make $3 for sure!

I keep all of my coins for parking. And once I have more 5c coins than I know what to do with, I dump them into the self serve checkout at the supermarket.

neanderthalsis9:33 am 30 Jan 13

dvaey said :

astrojax said :

does anyone know of the pokies club angle? i might pop into the tradies and ask and if i do i shall report back…

The clubs will happily take $1 coins off your hands, as long as theyre pre-sorted and you only give them $1 coins in the bag. Pokies dont take anything other than $1 coins so they have no need to sort/count other amounts.

I went to the Belco Laborious club some time ago with a large mix of coins sorted into denominations. They happily took them all.

The NAB at Woden Plaza has a coin counting machine where u dump ya coins in at a dominationat a time. You then proceed to the counter once all your coins have been counted with your print out of how much has been counted.

astrojax said :

not exceeding $5 if any of 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are offered

yet the pay parking meters, for instance, don’t accept 5c coins – next time i get a ticket i am going to protest, maintain that i offered to pay (my legal obligation, i understand) and was refused…

Do it. I hate not being able to use 5c piece for things like parking.

not exceeding $5 if any of 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are offered

yet the pay parking meters, for instance, don’t accept 5c coins – next time i get a ticket i am going to protest, maintain that i offered to pay (my legal obligation, i understand) and was refused…

What johnboy said. I know of one coffee place with a sign permanently up asking for change where possible. I guess they never start their float with a lot of coins..

So, start paying with more coins:

If your next store purchase costs $46.65 and your wallet contains a $50 note, a $1, 10c and 5c coin – hand them all over. You’ll then get 3 coins back – instead of 5 on top of the previous 3 in there if you’d just handed over the $50..

Keep doing that and you might even come home with no coins in your wallet at all.

However most businesses are glad to get some change, within limits.

astrojax said :

does woolies (or coles/supabarn) take 5c coins too? i am always offended when businesses refuse a coin of the realm – and have buckets of these little critters!

From the RBA:
According to the Reserve Bank Act 1959, Australian banknotes are legal tender. According to the Currency Act 1965, coins are legal tender for payment of amounts which are limited as follows:
not exceeding 20c if 1c and/or 2c coins are offered (however, it should be noted that these coins have been withdrawn from circulation but are still legal tender);
not exceeding $5 if any of 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are offered;
not exceeding 10 times the face value if coins in the range 50c to $10 inclusive are offered; and
to any value if coins of value greater than $10 are offered.

georgesgenitals1:31 pm 05 Apr 11

How about instead of counting it, you sell tickets to an event where you throw the entire lot of coins onto the ground in Garema Place at lunchtime, and watch the chuggers fight the beggars for it. You could even pick up a few bucks running a book on who bashes who.

Master_Bates1:08 pm 05 Apr 11

Spoono said :

I had what turned out to be $310 of change in a bucket. I took it to Westpac in Petrie Plaza to count and apparently they don’t have coin counting machines anymore. They weigh denominations instead. I had to sit in a room and make small bags of individual denominations to weigh, took me and my wife about 30mins.

Awesome – $350 for 30 mins work. That works out to $1.5 million per year (ignoring tax) — Thats a decent wage!

astrojax said :

does woolies (or coles/supabarn) take 5c coins too?

(from memory, as i no longer live in dickson) coles did accept 5c pieces.

I had trouble yesterday at superbarn, i did have a few 5c pieces rejected (but i dont think all of them?)

does woolies (or coles/supabarn) take 5c coins too? i am always offended when businesses refuse a coin of the realm – and have buckets of these little critters!

When you do your shopping at coles/bigW or superbarn – use the self serve checkout. I’ve used $25 in coins and yet to break the machine. Every month i take my (bag of) coins with me on the shop and use it instead.

(FYI the superbarn machine isn’t great as it feeds change out in 10c pieces for amounts less than $1)

Take your piles of coins to the nearest licensed Club, tell them its for the Pokies, and either take it as notes or run it into a machine and immediately cash out.
No fees, no lines.

bugger. i use the gold coins as real cash while the rest, for the most part, languish as mere nuisance… 🙂

astrojax said :

does anyone know of the pokies club angle? i might pop into the tradies and ask and if i do i shall report back…

The clubs will happily take $1 coins off your hands, as long as theyre pre-sorted and you only give them $1 coins in the bag. Pokies dont take anything other than $1 coins so they have no need to sort/count other amounts.

thanks t-s, and others. astromonkey is as yet too wee to count much at all, let lone myriad coinage – and far too wee to have sired grand-astromonkeys! and alas, i have no friends (present company excluded, mai oui!) and even lightweight ch9 disturbs me too much to consider, but i take the point.

does anyone know of the pokies club angle? i might pop into the tradies and ask and if i do i shall report back…

You only really have to sort them into different denominations and pile up 10 coins the same.Make other piles of 10 the same height and then count the piles….

troll-sniffer10:50 am 04 Apr 11

My advice which from the tone of your post you will probably dismiss anyway is…

…and this may come as a shock…

…and if you’re one of the instant gratification me me me generation won’t please you…

…sit at your kitchen table and do it yourself.

Believe it or not it’s a very relaxing and in some ways satisfying activity. It provides just a little mental exercise to add to your repertoire, it aids in dexterity, and if you have a friend (apologies if you don’t, it’s just that most of us do) you can idly chatter away in real life instead of on facebook for the time it takes to count the coins. If you don’t have any friends, a lightweight CH9 show, perhaps an American canned-laughter sitcom would make a nice background to the task at hand, as you would only need to occasionally glance at the screen to get the whole hilarious story.

Then, when you have rolled the rolls or bagged the bags, you can triumphantly take them to your credit union teller, who will probably advise you that they will check them later and credit your account once they’ve been verified, and you say thankyou and walk out, richer not only in monetary terms, but also in your self, and your interactions with someone outside the LCD screen in front of you.

1) Get mate with CBA account to get them to cash coins in and deposit into his account
2) Recieve deposit slip from CBA teller lady
3) Get mate to transfer $ shown on deposit reciept to your account

You could ask a family member or friend who has a bank account to get it deposited into their account for free then get the money off them.

I used to sort my money into denomination bags and take them into the bank, if the money is sorted they simply weigh it and give you the cash on the spot. You pay a 10% fee if you make them work, weighing bags is no work.

FioBla said :

I used to use the self checkouts at Coles, when I was in Sydney. Those accept large amounts of coins.

Another option is pizza delivery guys.. in my pizza delivery days I’d often get paid in a bag of coins

A $20 dollar set of electronic kitchen scales works perfectly eg $1 in 10c coins is 51grams ,a pile of them at 1020 grams divided by 51 is $20 and so on.

I used to use the self checkouts at Coles, when I was in Sydney. Those accept large amounts of coins.

I had what turned out to be $310 of change in a bucket. I took it to Westpac in Petrie Plaza to count and apparently they don’t have coin counting machines anymore. They weigh denominations instead. I had to sit in a room and make small bags of individual denominations to weigh, took me and my wife about 30mins.

Get a small set of jewellers scales, work out what each bag should weigh and start piling coins in – it’s easy. Banks will give you the bags for free, but they will probably charge you for counting coins. Something to do while you’re watching the idiot box.

NAB has a coin swap facility at their Woden, City and Gungahlin branches. Free if you have an account, but an amazing 10% of the value if you don’t deposit into an NAB account!
The Commonwealth Bank also has some in a number of their local branches – not sure of the fees they charge.

Ask the kids/grandkids to do it.

That’s exactly what our grandparents used us for when we were small children – although it was counting pennies in those days, and then 1c and 2c pieces later on. Our cut was a bag of lollies EACH (maximum was a 10c bag – a big deal in the days of 1/4c lollies).

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