Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin

[firstfrost]

So, for the past dozen years, tirinian has been creating small mountain of change in his bookshelf. It being time to pack up his bedroom (with help from ilhander), I decide to crusade against it, rather than packing the thirty pounds of coins to move. There are places that will turn coins into real money, with almost no expenditure of effort. Like the Star Market, for example.

So I start scooping coins into the containers we have left - which are not many, because I've packed them all. One pecan jar, one juice bottle, one tupperware container, one ice cream tub, and one wastebasket. This leaves one full tupperware "as a starter" for the next change pile. This last sends harrock into a fit of incomprehension - you can see the smoke - tirinian doesn't have the activation energy to start a coin pile from scratch? harrock can scarcely go a week without coin piles spontaneously generating like mushrooms that he has to stomp out.

Meanwhile, tirinian and I have been regarding each other with equal bemusement - he finds it funny that I am taking his change pile quite so personally, and I find it funny that he is so attached to it. Me, I collect change so that I can take it to the store and turn it into something useful, like food. Tirinian appears to collect change with a more draconic motivation - a large pile of treasure is better than a small one. He agrees that a bathtub of change would be nice, if coins were more comfy.

Meanwhile, I have begun to spot other secret stashes of coins elsewhere in the room. There's the broken coin-sorter with coins in it. There's the little easter basket with quarters in them. I glare balefully at all of them, and confiscate them. Ilhander, meanwhile, finds this all hilarious. Which is good, because if he's going to be here in the damp sweltering heat putting things in boxes, he ought to get some entertainment out of it.

Of course, by the time we finish all this, the Star has closed for the night. Oops.

Comments

[kelkyag]

(collapses in hysterical giggles)

I've been known to collect pennies, but usually once I filled whatever container I started with, I rolled them and turned them in for usable money. (It's amazing how many pennies you need to buy an ice cream cone.) Having laundry machines that take quarters is a fine way to learn that change is for spending.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Heehee!

Now I am totally tempted to own a bathtub filled with shiny change.

All my change is currently stored in a little ceramic thingy with a dragon on top.

Rolling

[baronet.livejournal.com]

I hear that large gaming runs are good places to stack and roll change. It's a finger activity but not a mind activity. Of course, you have better finger activities.

I've always been irrationally put-off by the 7% or so that the change machine charge. It's legal tender, and I want to be able to move my money from one form to another with only a little loss.

Rolling

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

mjperson said once that he used to be put off by that too, but then he realized that he was willing to pay his little sister $5 to roll $50 of change. :)

(I don't think of it as a fee for converting currency so much as a fee I pay for the convenience of not having to carry thirty pounds of coins to the bank during banking hours.)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

This rings all sorts of bells about a certain person I helped move a year or so ago. I rolled a bunch of the change in order to *buy* it from him, stopping after about $40 or so, and it barely made a dent. (We won't even mention the silly little plastic coin sorter I once bought this person. Talk about drinking from a firehose.)

I thought of it as a metaphor for all the other out-of-controlness he refused to touch in his life (the way he'd voluntarily pack the change and lug it from house to house, when a nominal effort would have converted its mass to economic energy, a win on both sides to my unenlightened eyes). I hadn't thought about the draconic angle. I shall have to propose the bathtub-of-change idea next time and see if that resonates.

Personally, I never accumulate coins because I *use* mine -- as change, in the service of keeping more of my money in its aerodynamic paper form in the first place. But, y'know, that's the kind of control freak I am.

[ironrat.livejournal.com]

DO NOT CONVERT THE CHANGE.
If it weren't meant to be bills, God would have made them bills. Change is meant for hoarding. Leave it leave it leave it.

[ironrat.livejournal.com]

And I will learn to say things that mean what I said. "If the coins were meant to be bills, God would have made them bills."

[dpolicar]

Yeah, I hear that.

For many years now, both my home and my brain have been the residence of a small family of stuffed foxes who have, among other properties, a fascination with collecting coins. (They inform me that they would happily collect bills or personal checks, also, but I'm too stingy.) They collect in jars, cans, piles, boxes, whatever containers are handy.

Some years ago, we sorted and rolled them for a while, stopping at about $200. At which point we went to the store and bought a coin-sorting machine with rolls of pennies. (The cashier was skeptical. The manager earned the title of Friend of Foxes by shrugging and replying "Money is money.")

Since then it's basically been a collection rather than a financial thing, except that from time to time, the foxes buy us plane tickets with their horde (not entirely willingly, but they do get to come along).

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Heh. You and mjperson both have stuffed animals with agendas of their own. His ducks kinda ran the place when he lived in Arizona.

(tirinian did have some coin roll papers - buried under the change. They've since been artfully arranged in the remaining tupperware.)

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

[seborn.livejournal.com]

Having laundry machines that require quarters has not taught me that change is for spending. It has taught me that quarters are not money at all, but are useful items for operating laundry machines, and can be purchased for $.25 a piece. I know that they are only laundry tokens, because I can purchase them along with T tokens at any token booth.

The drink machine at work does give me two quarters after I put in a dollar and get a drink, but I know that these are only markers indicating that it owes me another drink, not money. Sometimes I take a miss on the drink to do laundry instead.

[cfox.livejournal.com]

While I resent the sorting machines too much, and I almost resent Star too much, Star's automated checkout machines are handy for spending a big pocketful without annoying a human.

Which is a good thing, because Star's humans are often unable to cope if you try to pay with a twenty and the right number of pennies.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I am never able to successfully pay at the automatic checkouts that way, because I always forget and put the twenty in first, meaning to put the change in after that, and then my change starts dispensing. :-\

Coinstar

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Last time I saw the change machines at Star, they were Coinstar machines. They may have changed since, bu if they're still Coinstar, that's a completely separate company from Star Market.

I never accumulate more change than I can carry. If my pockets get heavy, I use a lot of change to buy something. The human might get annoyed -- I can't imagine why I'd care. If they have trouble with the math, they usually slow down until they figure it out, which doesn't bother me either.

Besides, physical currency (whether metal or paper) is barbaric.

Sometimes it rained money!

[twe.livejournal.com]

Were you never home when the money pile on the bookshelf became unstable and started raining coins onto the pile on the floor? That was very disconcerting the first time that happened and I was home alone...

[kelkyag]

True, true. And I used to buy quarters in rolls from time to time when I didn't generate enough quarters by buying other things.