Dimes you say?

[Teefies2]

This didn't happen to me .... at first.

Our cashier tonight allowed someone to pay for their $140 in merchandise with rolls of dimes. Yes you read that right ...... ROLLS of dimes! One hundred and forty dollars in rolled up dimes. Do you know how many rolls of dimes that is??? 28 rolls of dimes. UGH I did not discover this until I pulled the till to count it down for the night. Now, I know, sometimes you're broke and you need to use the saved up coins. I get that. I really do. But honestly???? $140 worth??????? What the heck are you buying at the drug store - that is NOT medicine - that totals $140?

Unfortunately for me, those rolls had to be opened and counted and then rolled back up, by company policy (and OH YES, cashier will be informed that next time they will be doing the unrolling and counting). So, almost an hour later ... here is the result:

Rolls of dimes: 28
Pennies stuffed in the rolls: 6
Total cash count of the rolls of dimes?: $143.56

Yep you read that right. The SC who insisted on paying this way actually cheated themselves out of $3.56. Too bad, so sad, you lose sir!

Yeah, I know, I'm the one who really lost, having to count all of that, but it was so sweet to realize that not only were we NOT cheated, they cheated themselves

[sirwired]

Sheesh... every time I have extra change, I dump it in the Coinstar for an Amazon gift cert. No fee, and I'll be spending that soon enough anyway.

[Dreamstalker]

Were any of the dimes silver? If so, he shorted himself quite a bit more...I find silver dimes/quarters abandoned in the Coinstar every so often (I'm allowed to keep them if I do find some; machines won't take them but the local coin guy will).

We had one guy last week who wanted to pay for groceries and a $50 store gift card with...over $50 in loose quarters in a paper bag. At 10:30 at night. The other cashier refused (policy we can't accept an excessive amount of loose coin, generally up to the cashier what constitutes 'excessive'), so buddy comes to me (I think ASM waved him over). I say no, I can't fit that in the drawer--which is true, I had just opened a roll. So he pays for his $14.75 in groceries with...yup, quarters--he left before I counted it all and did short himself (total he gave me was $16).

ASM: "Why did you turn a customer away?"
Me: "Guy wanted to buy a $50 gift card with loose quarters. I can't take all those coins so pointed him to the Coinstar."
ASM: "The Coinstar takes a cut. Money's money."
J: "You open up and deal with him then. I have to sweep Dreamstalker's drawer now because of all the coins. [to me] How much did he give you?"
Me: "I'll reprint the receipt; it was $14-something and I didn't get a chance to give him his change. I had just opened a new roll when he rolled up."

As predicted, the drawer was $1.25 over in quarters. I think that went into the 'therapy fund' someone keeps behind the desk.

[EricKei]

I can see slipping pennies into rolls of nickels or even quarters to cheat the recipient (I've seen that crap before), but pennies in a dime roll?? o_O Especially given that they're bigger across than dimes by a noticeable amount...

[taxguykarl]

On one hand it's good news when a SC pwns themselves OTOH counting through all that change sucks.

[Aragarthiel]

I've only ever once paid for something in coins. It was $5 in gas ($3.75 in quarters) we managed to scrounge up because Hubs's paycheck hadn't direct deposited and he didn't have enough gas to get to work to pick up the paper check.

[Monterey Jack]

ASM: "The Coinstar takes a cut. Money's money."

The Coinstar machine in my store doesn't charge a fee so long as you choose to get your money back in the form of a gift card, either for my store or a variety of other stores. I don't know why more people don't use this option.

[wolfie]

Unfortunately for me, those rolls had to be opened and counted and then rolled back up, by company policy (and OH YES, cashier will be informed that next time they will be doing the unrolling and counting). So, almost an hour later ... here is the result:

Rolls of dimes: 28
Pennies stuffed in the rolls: 6
Total cash count of the rolls of dimes?: $143.56

What I find more interesting than the 6 pennies is the other $3.50. I've read about cases where a coin was revised - sometimes the new was thicker than the old, sometimes it was thinner. In this situation, it looks like the customer had somehow got 35 extra dimes spread across the 28 rolls - if you include the pennies, he had on average more than 1 extra coin per roll.

I can see slipping pennies into rolls of nickels or even quarters to cheat the recipient (I've seen that crap before), but pennies in a dime roll?? o_O Especially given that they're bigger across than dimes by a noticeable amount...

I've seen hacking/phreaking/anarchy files about making dime "slugs" from pennies. Basically, it involves filing them down by hand - hardly worth the effort.

[taxguykarl]

I don't know why more people don't use this option.

Have you forgotten the name & theme of this forum?

[AccountingDrone]

The Coinstar machine in my store doesn't charge a fee so long as you choose to get your money back in the form of a gift card, either for my store or a variety of other stores. I don't know why more people don't use this option.

We have an old plastic water jug that we toss change into, it is our New Year's Party funding. I think we average about $300 or so in change every year when we lug the damned thing to our Credit Union - they have a 'free' coinstar in the lobby for members. And back in the day when I was a young sprout first on my own, I saved change and used it for funding vacations, though one tight spot it ended up paying rent when I was between jobs.

We always sort through our change and look for the old silver coins or oddities [I have a couple of the steel/zinc pennies and a collection of foreign change. You can easily mistake an old kroner for a quarter if you are not careful, and I actually have a 1 centime piece from 196-something left over from a mid 70s trip to France that I found on the street!]

[Chromatix]

Actually *living* on this side of the Pond used to be a potential goldmine for interestingly foreign coins. It still is, to a lesser extent, since there are a few European countries who haven't joined the Euro currency - notably Denmark, Norway and Sweden, as well as the UK of course. And you do also find people in the Eurozone who have kept hold of a few pre-Euro coins, just as there are still quite a few pre-decimal coins floating around the UK.

I still think the pre-decimal British currency is the most interesting of the lot. The pound was divided into fully 960 pieces - twenty shillings per pound, twelve pence per shilling, and farthings were quarter-pence.

The abbreviations for these smaller denominations also somehow dated back to the Roman era - a penny was written 1d, where the 'd' stood for 'denarius'; the corresponding 's' for 'shilling' also stood for 'sestertius'; and the £ sign itself is a stylised L, standing for 'libra', the Latin for 'pound'.

And time was when a pound coin (known as a sovereign) was made of gold (half the thickness but the same diameter and weight as the modern brass coin). That meant it was genuinely worth something, even in places where a reliable exchange rate wasn't available - that's why James Bond was sometimes shown to be issued with a roll of them.

[Sapphire Silk]

The Coinstar machine in my store doesn't charge a fee so long as you choose to get your money back in the form of a gift card, either for my store or a variety of other stores. I don't know why more people don't use this option.

Because the gift card probably also charges fees. One way or another, Coinstar gets its money.

We always sort through our change and look for the old silver coins or oddities [I have a couple of the steel/zinc pennies and a collection of foreign change. You can easily mistake an old kroner for a quarter if you are not careful, and I actually have a 1 centime piece from 196-something left over from a mid 70s trip to France that I found on the street!]

I do this as well. Found some silver quarters this way

I have an old tin child's coin box that I throw all my loose change in. About twice a year, when it's full, I take it to the credit union (the coin machine there is free) and walk out with about $80 in cash Great mad money.

[Dreamstalker]

It's not too hard to overfill coin rolls if you're doing it by hand. Our bank has a change machine, but they charge a fee even if you have an account. I just snag empty coin wrappers from my other job (counting the weekly collection at mom's church) or just swap the coins for bills when I'm there.

I've seen hacking/phreaking/anarchy files about making dime "slugs" from pennies. Basically, it involves filing them down by hand - hardly worth the effort.

You used to be able to cheat parking meters by rubbing a penny or nickel on the pavement to get an approximation of a reeded edge (don't know if it still works, probably not).

My grandfather worked in the counterfeiting division of the Secret Service for many years. We had kept some hilariously bad examples of fake bills from his 'presentation kit' (he would travel the region making presentations to other offices on what to look for--I have two old mugshots). Those were given to the agency museum when he died (no possibility of them getting into the wild again or getting found), but I still have a number of copper quarter slugs.

[Teefies2]

What I find more interesting than the 6 pennies is the other $3.50. I've read about cases where a coin was revised - sometimes the new was thicker than the old, sometimes it was thinner. In this situation, it looks like the customer had somehow got 35 extra dimes spread across the 28 rolls - if you include the pennies, he had on average more than 1 extra coin per roll.

Exactly. The person put more than one extra coin per roll ... 28 times! I can see messing up a couple of times - with that many rolls, maybe 2 or 3 - but 28?? How unaware are you of what you're doing?

[dawnfire]

What I find more interesting than the 6 pennies is the other $3.50. I've read about cases where a coin was revised - sometimes the new was thicker than the old, sometimes it was thinner. In this situation, it looks like the customer had somehow got 35 extra dimes spread across the 28 rolls - if you include the pennies, he had on average more than 1 extra coin per roll.

Exactly. The person put more than one extra coin per roll ... 28 times! I can see messing up a couple of times - with that many rolls, maybe 2 or 3 - but 28?? How unaware are you of what you're doing?

it would be quite easy if you miscounted the first stack and then rolled the rest according that stack but still pretty stupid