Sitting abandoned on the shelf of my supermarket CoinStar, a 1 Euro coin from Italy.
Last week I found a whole bunch of change in the reject bin, including a 2002 Canada Day quarter and three 2 Euro cent pieces from Germany and Italy, along with a few other Canadian coins.
Most recent one - Gibraltar £1 found in circulation in the UK. It looks (and its specs are) the same as common British £1 but it's not a legal tender here.
A Denmark 20 kronor coin in the change from a coffee shop in Canada, I guess it looks close to our older/pre-security issue $1 loonie coin.. (9.3g, 27mm vs. 7g, 26.5g)
Finally all those trips looking into the coinstar paid off. One silver dime, a swordfish from Singapore and two Aruba florins!
It was empty when I went in so it was while I was there.
Taking a break from swapping for a while, but still interested in pre 1799 Spanish coins, I will make time for that!
Another silver dime in the same coin star! Too bad it's almost my last day working in that town. Thanks Cerulean for posting about coinstar in 2012 I haven't found anything good since then and now two silver dimes in two weeks!
Taking a break from swapping for a while, but still interested in pre 1799 Spanish coins, I will make time for that!
On the floor of the train station platform, a 1981 Chilean peso.
It has traveled 8,070 km in 36 years, from Santiago to Washington. That's 614m/day, or 0.0256 kph, or 7mm per second. It could have rolled all the way here. I wonder where it went along the way, especially since this type hasn't been current in its home country for over 20 years.
I live in the United States, so of course I have found many Canadian coins in change. I also look through rolls of coins I get from the bank. Two interesting coins I found in rolls of nickels recently were:
1. 2006 Singapore 20 cents, with a face value of about 14 U.S. cents - so I made 9 cents!
2. 2007 United Arab Emirates 50 fils, with a face value of about 19 U.S. cents
Haven't found any foreign coins in town lately except Canadian cents, which are essentially useless, as I can't even spend them across the border (I put them in the Tim Hortons charity box where they can be deposited in the bank).
But, I did receive a US Series 1981 $5 bill in my change today. That is two versions ago - almost as good as a foreign coin, right??
Ok, so I went to the local grocery store today, but the Coinstar was empty, as it has been for the past few months. Then I went to a local greek restaurant to pick up lunch. As I was paying, I noticed a large, half-dollar sized coin in the til. Turns out, it was a 2012 10 piasters from Jordan. Also in the til was a 1979 Canadian nickel and a 2010 25 qirsh/piasters from Egypt.
The owner was nice enough to give them to me! How very nice of him.
He said they were from a customer who had just returned from Jordan.
At the CoinStar tonight, a new one for my collection: Germany, 2 pfennig, 1964-F
It was mixed in with $0.92 in domestic coins, too, so I got paid to find it.
I feel like you guys are so lucky who can find foreign coins in your change.
In Sweden I never found any foreign coins - and why would I? In the west there's Norway, their curreny are 1.2 SEK for 1 NOK, in the south there's Denmark, which has 1.3 SEK for 1 DKK, and to the east there's Finland which uses the Euros (9.8 SEK for 1 EUR). Who would think like "Hey, let's use my Norwegian/Danish/Euro coins! They're worth more, but whatever!"? Also, there's many tourists from Germany (Euros), The Netherlands (Euros), Polen (2.3 SEK for 1 PLN), and UK (11 SEK for 1 GBP). And since half of Europe uses Euros you can just forget about foreign finds.
Now, I live in South Korea. The Korean Won in so weak that only Indonesians and Vietnamese visitors would have something to gain by using their own coins. Oh yeah, Vietnam doesn't even use coins, and the Indonesian ones are in aluminium, so they're much lighter and very easy to distinguish from the Korean ones.
I've only got foregn finds once in my change, and that was when I was living in Australia. Then I somethimes got Kiwi coins in change. They're worth less, but it felt like i was the winner!
Last night, for the first time in my life, I put money into a CoinStar machine. I am planning an Amazon purchase, so the no-fee Amazon credit was a good idea.
When I finished, the machine spit out two dimes (not mine) and a 2013 Chuck E. Cheese token.
Do you find a lot of US dimes at your coinstar? There must be something in the new ones - 2015-17, that makes the Coinstar reject them, because I find as many US dimes as I do other coins in my local coinstar machines
Someone left a Canadian twonie and a quarter sitting on the shelf of the CoinStar at the supermarket. So strange that someone should just leave that in a border city - that's at least a large coffee at Tim Horton's right there.
