For this reason many people don’t have a use for something like a change counter. This isn’t a bad thing simply because it cuts down on having to keep track of change, or find a place to put it or keep it out of the cracks of your couch.  Many people don’t even look at spare change as any kind of value anymore. If you’ve ever looked at a penny on the ground you most likely just kept walking because gaining one cent isn’t worth the picking the filthy thing up off of the ground! Even if you didn’t find it on the ground, spare change and money (cash) in general is considered to  be very dirty as it has been touched by so many people. So the progression to using plastic or checks to pay for things has been a good one for many people. 

There are however a large number of people who deal with change on a regular basis and who could benefit greatly from a change counter. What about waiters and waitresses, or a bartender? Basically any person who works or visits a place that uses change on a regular basis could make good use of a change counter. Many people however don’t see any real value in change and so it ends up piling up on their dresser or in a seperate location that they don’t really pay attention to. Spare change in itself isn’t all that valuable, but while you can’t really buy much with a few coins, you can buy things with many that you’ve saved. The potential value of saving your change can be very lucrative over a large period of time and without putting in much extra effort. If you were to go and collect all of the coins that you have in your house right now sitting in your house, car, or at work you would probably have enough to pay for at least an entire meal. The idea is to instead of throwing away change or just ignoring it when you pass by it, pick it up and store it in a place that you can use later on. Over the next year you will probably accumulate close to two hundred dollars.

The point of all this is to prove that collecting change and saving it can be worth your while, and while at the end of the year it may be a pain to sit down and count how much to see if it’s worth it to take it to the bank yet, you can eliminate this annoyance buy purchasing a change counter. A change counter is just as the name sounds. It’s a device that you can pour your change into that will automatically count the change and show you how much it’s worth. This saves much time and hassel of counting it manually and then forgetting where you’re at and eliminates human error. So building the habit of collecting change along with purchasing a change counter can be a great addition to your everyday lifestyle and will benefit for you – and in the end the change counter will end up paying for itself if you stick with it. 

The coin star change counter works by first asking you to pour your change into its large compartment change counter. This is much larger than the compartment you would have if you own a personal change counter; this large compartment allows you to pour more change in at one time and therefore is much faster at counting. The great thing about it is you don’t have to sort anything out, you can just dump it in and the machine does the rest of the work for you and with great accuracy. Once you pour your change in you will notice a small handle on the side of the change holder compartment. You can use this to wiggle the change down into the counter as room becomes available. Once the change passes into the coin start, it calculates what type of coin it is and then adds it to your current talley of money that you have going. The amount of money is then updated to a screen that you can see so you can view how much cash you are making. This is actually pretty exciting to see your change converted into a number that is recognizable, you’ll feel like you’re at your very own wheel of fortune and may feel the need to shout “big money!”.

Once the change is totaled and put into a number, the percent that the coinstar takes is deducted from that amount. This is typically only about 2-5% of what you made that the coinstar changes. While it may not sound good to have to give up some of your change, take into consideration the alternative ; going to the bank with a big bag of coins and putting it up on the counter while a long line of people who are impatient let out a large groan as they know this is going to take some time. Besides, you’re not going to feel too cool and probably will feel a little desperate bringing a bag of coins to the bank. The coinstar saves you time and hassel that you probably don’t want to invest in such a thing. Once the coinstar has your money added up you just click a “cash out” button located on the change counter at which time a receipt it printed out for you. If you take this piece of paper up to the front service counter and give it to them, they will give you actual cash for it. It’s a great feeling when you just took a bunch of seemingly useless change and turned it into cash that you can then use to grocery shop with.

So a coinstar offers advantages because it immediately converts your change into actual cash, where as if you have a change counter at your home it only gives you the amount of change that you have and nothing more. You will still have to take that change to the bank where it will be counted again, most likely with a commercial change counter anyway!

A change counter works very similar in this way that it doesn’t really care what’s written on the coin at all. A change counter has no way of reading things that are written on currency and even if it did the coin would have to be placed in the exact way (right side up) in order for it to read. Because coins are small and can spin and turn, by the time it got down inside the change counter it would have no idea how to look at it even if it could read. This is why most change counters simply go by size. If you were to look inside most change counters you would see a slot of some kind that has different sized holes for each type of coin. When you drop your coin into the change counter it rolls or falls down this row of coin slots and if the coin fits it will fall into the slot. For this reason the order of the coin slots is extremely important. The order of the coin slots is the following: Dime, penny, nickle, quarter, half dollar, silver dollar. The reason why the order that the coin size slots is so important is because without it in this order it would count your change incorrectly. Let’s say that you dropped a dime into the change counter and the first coin slot was the quarter. Because a dime can easily fit into the quarter slot it would fall into it and be calculated as twenty five cents instead of ten cents. This would give you an incorrect dollar amount at the end. However, with the correct order, if you dropped a quarter in, the quarter cannot fit into the dime, penny, or nickle slot and would fall into the quarter slot. It would also fall into the half-dollar or silver dollar slot but it won’t get a chance to because the quarter comes first.

Not all change counters come with half dollar and silver dollar counters. While these are considered real currency, they aren’t used very often. They are similar to the two dollar bill ; you don’t see it used very often but it’s still a real working part of our monetary system. For most people having a change counter that only counts pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters will be sufficient but if you are running a business or at a bank then you will need a change counter that can handle any type of change.

You can also purchase international change counters. These change counters contain slots for all of the major currencies in the world so you can drop practically any type into it and come out with a dollar amount. Some of these international change counters will even conver it to whatever monetary system you wish. Before you use these you must first tell it which type of currency you are dropping in there so it knows which slot sizes and order to use. Once it has completed counting the change you can tell it to show you how much it is worth in another part of the country. This type of change counter is good for people who travel and may not be familiar with all of the different types of currency rates across the world.