Strange but starting last Friday I’d find one heavily damaged quarter in my pocket change at the end of each day. Starting this morning after finding the third one in my change last night, I decided to look close at my change I get back from each place I go to. Turns out it’s my change I get from Starbucks when I get my cup of coffee every morning. I go to the very same store every time. This morning after paying, I look closely at my change and Boom! There it is! Makes sense now why I only get them in my weekday change only, I don’t go to Starbucks on the weekends. I almost asked the cashier to take it back and give me a better one. But I’ll just bring them all to the bank and have them give me replacements. I’ve done it many times before. So since last Friday, I’ve gotten one of these in my change every morning (Friday, Monday, Tuesday and today). I’m thinking that they get quite a few individuals throughout the day who’ve scraped up enough coins throughout their daily/nightly travels homeless on the streets to buy a cup of coffee. Starbucks is just passing the buck onto me, or more like passing the damaged coins onto me. The dirty roadkill one at the top left corner is the one I got this morning.
I wouldn't do that. Don't annoy the barista making your drink You might get an extra unwanted ingredient in your coffee
I'm guessing you are purchasing your coffee after somebody who is in difficult circumstances and finds coins on the road. Either shop earlier or use a card, or enjoy the road-rash-special.
If I'm heading to the bank for business I bring the coins with me and then ask for a replacement when I'm dealing with the human teller. They've not declined yet.
I'm thinking they've got a coin cubby in the register full of damaged coins and throughout the day just randomly hand them out in change to get rid of them. Maybe I'll just dump them in the tip jar, of course without them noticing that I'm putting a hand full of damaged coins in their jar that I collected in my change from them.
I have a friend who collects ugly quarters and loves them. He says he's always looking for a downgrade!
Coins that are damaged often originate in places like automobile recycler. When the car is shredded a few of the coins in it will fall out of the machinery and are often heavily damaged. Alternatively banks will save them up in a bucket and someone will end up repairing them. Repair is very easy. It's just a few well placed taps with a ballpeen hammer and then filing them back down to round. Most of them take a few seconds and they'll even go through vending machines and coin counters (usually). Nobody wants quantities of these because they don't all work so they are usually dispersed a few at a time. Up until about 2010 a great number of culls had accumulated in circulation but now days it appears the FED contractors are finally pulling out distorted, bent, and mangled coin. Heavily damaged coins are still in circulation but these are mostly coins that are eaten by chemicals or heavily tarnished. Many culls in circulation have deep scratches or are covered by thousands and thousands of little scratches. To get an idea of how bad this is getting try finding a nice heavily worn 1971 nickel. This is one of the best dates so nice examples get pulled out leaving only garbage. If you don't go through a lot of nickels you probably won't find one so just observe how banged up and cull the 1965 to 1973 nickels and quarters are.
That sure doesn't sound very cost effective. Plus, take a close look at the coins I posted. Most have pieces (material) missing. No fixing that.
