Monstarules
Full Member
Those of you who know me, know that I am an avid urban treasure hunter, and that I find loads of coins in the reject tray of the Coinstar. However, for a long time, I've wondered how many coins are actually rejected on a given business day. I've found an extremely active machine in a rough part of town, which provides me with a perfect environment to find a wide range of coins. However, these coins do not sit long, as they are swept up by bums, the homeless, junkies, fellow coin hunters, machine users, my friends, and me. So the question is, on average, how many coins are rejected on a given day?
I recently wanted to get an idea of how many coins are actually rejected by the machine. An idea occurred to me a while back, when someone joked about stuffing a sock in the reject slot of a vending machine to ensure that coins wouldn't be rejected. It would definitely be a way to find out the number of coins rejected in a day, as they wouldn't fall out of the machine unless about 2-3 pounds of coins happened to sit on top of the sock at one point in time (in which case, everything would fall out at once to the joy/confusion of the user of the machine). It also wouldn't make the machine jam, unless someone was feeding it an absurd amount of rejectable coins and the coins were piled high enough on the floor. The reject ramp in the machine itself is about 6-7" long, and has lipped sides. The entire tray (and the sock) could hold hundreds of coins of multiple sizes.
Is this illegal? It's not exactly tampering with the machine's function (as the coins still are rejected, they just don't reach the end of the chute), so it's technically not, but I still wouldn't recommend doing it, especially because it looks suspicious and could (in a rare circumstance) cause issues. A Coinstar or store employee would definitely be less than thrilled to find a sock jammed up the reject chute with 2 pounds of crusty/foreign coins behind it. People in years past have done this as a prank before to make vending machines jam, and that's probably why the reject ramps in the Coinstar machines are open topped, so that coins can fall to the sides if it starts filling up with an absurd amount of coins. I'm doing this in the name of numismatic science, and I intend to do it at a few different sites to generate good results. I DO NOT SUGGEST THAT YOU DO THIS YOURSELF. I know the staff of the stores I'm doing this at well, and I can say it is legitimately a research project. I accept no responsibility if you get in trouble with store management.
How will I be documenting the findings? Here, of course, and I'll organize it with Microsoft Excel. The rejects will be documented into the following categories (up for changes and suggestions):
- Trash
- Religious items
- Regular foreign coins
- Foreign coins
- Clad currency
- Old U.S. pennies
- Old U.S. nickels
- Old (before 1970 in most cases) foreign coins
- Silver foreign coins
- Silver U.S. coins
- Numismatic rarities
- Jewelry of any type
- Gold coins
This will not include finds in the dirt cups, or plastic jars inside the machines. This is a study purely on the external reject tray (I'll publish a study on the dirt cup eventually). Will I keep the finds? Yeah, I'm still hunting for coins, but I want to get qualative and quantative results on what is actually rejected. Picture related, it's the 2 most recent silver Coinstar finds I've made in the reject tray. 1957-P Rosie and a 1962 Young Head.
I recently wanted to get an idea of how many coins are actually rejected by the machine. An idea occurred to me a while back, when someone joked about stuffing a sock in the reject slot of a vending machine to ensure that coins wouldn't be rejected. It would definitely be a way to find out the number of coins rejected in a day, as they wouldn't fall out of the machine unless about 2-3 pounds of coins happened to sit on top of the sock at one point in time (in which case, everything would fall out at once to the joy/confusion of the user of the machine). It also wouldn't make the machine jam, unless someone was feeding it an absurd amount of rejectable coins and the coins were piled high enough on the floor. The reject ramp in the machine itself is about 6-7" long, and has lipped sides. The entire tray (and the sock) could hold hundreds of coins of multiple sizes.
Is this illegal? It's not exactly tampering with the machine's function (as the coins still are rejected, they just don't reach the end of the chute), so it's technically not, but I still wouldn't recommend doing it, especially because it looks suspicious and could (in a rare circumstance) cause issues. A Coinstar or store employee would definitely be less than thrilled to find a sock jammed up the reject chute with 2 pounds of crusty/foreign coins behind it. People in years past have done this as a prank before to make vending machines jam, and that's probably why the reject ramps in the Coinstar machines are open topped, so that coins can fall to the sides if it starts filling up with an absurd amount of coins. I'm doing this in the name of numismatic science, and I intend to do it at a few different sites to generate good results. I DO NOT SUGGEST THAT YOU DO THIS YOURSELF. I know the staff of the stores I'm doing this at well, and I can say it is legitimately a research project. I accept no responsibility if you get in trouble with store management.
How will I be documenting the findings? Here, of course, and I'll organize it with Microsoft Excel. The rejects will be documented into the following categories (up for changes and suggestions):
- Trash
- Religious items
- Regular foreign coins
- Foreign coins
- Clad currency
- Old U.S. pennies
- Old U.S. nickels
- Old (before 1970 in most cases) foreign coins
- Silver foreign coins
- Silver U.S. coins
- Numismatic rarities
- Jewelry of any type
- Gold coins
This will not include finds in the dirt cups, or plastic jars inside the machines. This is a study purely on the external reject tray (I'll publish a study on the dirt cup eventually). Will I keep the finds? Yeah, I'm still hunting for coins, but I want to get qualative and quantative results on what is actually rejected. Picture related, it's the 2 most recent silver Coinstar finds I've made in the reject tray. 1957-P Rosie and a 1962 Young Head.
I can rationalize this, but it's also technically not illegal (when I say I'm sure it's not, I'm sure it's not illegal yet), but I've decided I'm not gonna do it.
