Hello all, Over this past week I’ve found 2 silver dimes, 8 silver Kennedy half’s, and 2 silver Franklin half’s in my Safeway coinstar. I’m sure I’ve missed out on a whole lot more since my favorite regular likes to come sit next to it half the week. Lots of people bring their coins in and forget to check what comes out the bottom. I urge everyone to check, and post what you find here id love to see how lucky we can get. This week was definitely a wild one over the rest. Nothing better than free additions to the collection! Also does anyone know why I keep finding silvers? Do coin machines notice the difference?
They sure do. Most coin acceptors rely on the size, weight, and magnetic properties of a coin to determine whether it's acceptable or not. Silver differs from copper-nickel clad in weight (it's heavier) and magnetic properties. More accurately, electromagnetic properties -- moving a conductive object through a magnetic field produces "eddy currents" in the object, which produce a magnetic field opposing the external one. The more conductive the material, the more pronounced the effect, and silver is the most conductive material under normal conditions. The main event that got me back into the hobby was encountering someone at a CoinStar trying to dump a jar full of mostly silver change into the machine. The machine was having none of it. (Or maybe it was having some, but it was rejecting most.) I was happy to help the guy with his problem.
That's so cool I wish I wasn't so anxious about talking about my hobbies with my customers. I often want to ask people if I can round up their change or their rejects and buy them but that seems very weird to do. Thank you for the detailed explanation on how coin sorters work, this was extremely helpful.
Here is a thread that has been going for a while: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/reject-tube-coinstar-finds.201092/page-148
