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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 3263994, member: 27832&quot;]I&#039;m pretty sure the coins get sorted by size, weight, and magnetic (electromagnetic) characteristics.</p><p><br /></p><p>If the coin isn&#039;t the size of a cent, nickel, dime, quarter, half, or small dollar, it gets rejected. (I don&#039;t think CoinStars take Ikes.) Most damaged (dented, dryered, bent, stuck together) coins register as &quot;wrong size&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>If the coin is too heavy or too light for its size/denomination, it gets rejected. (There has to be a certain tolerance here, because the weight of newly-minted coins varies, and they lose weight as they circulate, albeit slowly.)</p><p><br /></p><p>The coin also passes by a magnet. Iron, steel, and pure nickel coins get attracted to the magnet, and rejected. Coins that aren&#039;t conductive enough don&#039;t slow down as much as a real coin, and they&#039;re rejected. Coins that are too conductive (silver) slow down more than a &quot;real coin&quot;, and they&#039;re rejected, too.</p><p><br /></p><p>I see completely normal coins (clad dimes, copper or zinc cents, nickels and quarters) in the reject slot fairly frequently, so it&#039;s possible that the machines are tuned to err on the side of caution. It&#039;s also possible that there&#039;s an equal or greater number of &quot;bad&quot; coins getting accepted -- but if the machines mistakenly accepted slugs or foreign coins too frequently, it would come out of CoinStar&#039;s bottom line, so they&#039;ve got good business reasons to tune the machines conservatively. (They don&#039;t lose so much money if they fail to accept the occasional cent or dime, especially since users will typically keep trying to run them through until they&#039;re accepted.)</p><p><br /></p><p>I guess CoinStar <i>could</i> put some work into recognizing and segregating silver coins, counting them at face value but setting them aside for resale. I suspect the expected volume of silver is low enough that it&#039;s not worth their while.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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