If I didn't travel so much for work, I'd be all over getting a part-time field position with coinstar. Talk about a cherrypickers dream. From their website: Summary of Key Responsibilities: • Drives truck or automobile during scheduled daily distribution of product to machines at various locations on the route • Collects money from machines and records amount I shop at a Krogers in a fairly busy area and generally see someone dumping a bag of coins into these things. Somebody is paid to empty these every day or so and what an opportunity.... What a deal, getting paid to cherrypick...
Are you thinking they let the techs take the big bags of change home to look through before turning them in to the company?? I'm guessing no.
I think they do. They have to collect the money and verify the amount... I would imagine that they roll the change and deposit it into a Coinstar account at a local bank, similar to a restaurant manager, etc... Matt verified that a Coinstar tech brings a couple of coins into his shop every week or so... Seems like a nice gig if it plays out that way... Summary of Key Responsibilities: • Drives truck or automobile during scheduled daily distribution of product to machines at various locations on the route • Collects money from machines and records amount • Keeps daily record of product distributed to each machine, calculates number of vends and vend ratios • Provides quality customer service through regular interaction and communication with account managers, owner, employees, and player • Communicates status of machines and customer accounts to Team Leaders • Cooperates with co-workers and promotes a positive and productive working environment • Accounts for the security of all money, machines, and merchandise on the route - includes reporting machine vandalism and theft as well as researching shortages/overages of money collected • Keeps machines cleaned and maintained in proper working order - includes route maintenance as needed • Keeps daily inventory record of merchandise taken from warehouse stock • Maintains company tools in proper working condition • Listens to and resolves service complaints • Places product in machines to maximize presentation and sales • Loads and unloads product from truck or automobile • Cleans and performs routine maintenance on vehicle • Helps install and remove equipment from locations • Adhere to all Product Merchandising Programs, Company Machine Standards, and any special requests for products as identified by the Team Leader or Area Manager
I find it highly unlikely that they would allow enough time to cherrypick. I beleive thtat Matt's example would be the tech regularly checking the reject bin and finding those items.
Yeah my tech has told me that the coins are not sorted into different bins by denom but into a few big bins all mixed denominations. The accepted coins fall into big bins and they are locked besides a little hole for the coins... no cherrypicking there... They then use brinks to count, sort, roll, and deposit the change into their account. Some coins are rejected by the machine.. and come out the reject chute... which is where he finds the good stuff.
Where I find the good stuff too, my best recent find was a 1926 Lincoln about two weeks ago. I check the reject trays to my wife's chagrin all the time. My one daughter had the best haul, over $2 worth of coins, Bolivian coins, silver, Canadian etc.
I always hear about people checking the reject bin for coins. But I've never really gone up to a coinstar machine before. Where is the reject bin at?
This type of job would be like the people who collect the coins out of parking meters. It's all in metal boxes or whatever. They don't see a single coin. Just think about it. Let someone collect the money from a coinstar or parking meter and then THEY get to count it? I personally wouldn't want the responsability - what if the machine was screwed up and you came out $20 short each time?
The technician that picks up the coin case may not count the change - but someone has to dump the hopper into a coin sorter and for a final count and wrapping prior to deposit. My point is that somewhere in the process the raw coins are exposed and available for someone to exchange (not steal). It may be as far down the line as the bank itself. To that point, you wouldn't have to pick up and look at each and every coin to snag all the silver coins and many of the wheats.
At least here locally it's done at Brinks... I know someone who works at Brinks as well. Their incoming change (including the coinstar) goes into a counting room where the loose change is dumped into a large hopper and then sorted, counted, wrapped, and shipped for delivery. Once again no time to look through it. I said to my friend who is in the management structure at brinks "why dont you guys sort it for silver?" He said that there isn't any machine on the market that can do it reliably and to pay someone to sort it is not cost, or time effective. They are all about processing product.. which in their case is coins. The only time the coins get hand sorted at all is in the sorting and wrapping process where any odd sized coins pop out of the sorter. I'm not sure what happens to them at that point... I should ask... But that's it... even in the field of handling commercial change there isn't a job that lets you go through and sort the change... and Brinks does not let anyone exchange coins...
There are still a lot of jobs where one could sort through change until their heart's content. When I was a kid my dad had a vending machine business on the side. Every few days we'd go all over town and restock the machines and empty the hoppers. then we'd go home and sort and roll the change. In the 70's there was actually still a lot of silver to be found, and so over the course of the five years he ran that business we filled two large coffee cans with silver quarters and dimes. We didn't have to exchange it, because it was ours to begin with. I doubt today you could be so lucky, but I still average about four of five silver quarters in vending machine change a year at our machines in the office. Guy~
Matt --- Thanks for the clarification of the coinstar money trail. So.... the bank would then receive the deposits from Brinks and generally some portion of the wrapped coins would remain in the branch with the remainder going to the banks regional center for re-distribution. So, the good news is that some of the goodies should make it back into circulation.
The fact that no one goes through the coins explains why I have gotten dimes in Brinks wrapped rolls, why there are lots of wheats, Canadians, Bahamas, German, French etc. What I think is curious is some coin machines sort the reject stuff better, and some not so well, which would explain why I get European 2 euro cent coins from time to time, they are copper plated steel. They should have been rejected.
