Turn your change into apps

Wow, TUAW, you got this tip out in the nick of time. My summer gig is ending and before going home I always swap out all the change I've accumulated over the past 3 months in the Coinstar at the local supermarket. I was literally going to go tomorrow. Thanks for helping me save a little cash for some fun apps!

I've been doing this at Coinstar for a few years now. It's free (no 9% off) if you roll it into a gift card. The thing I've run into is that sometimes the machines are out of physical cards and it doesn't tell you this till at the end, which ticked me off. The way around it - there's a way to select an ELECTRONIC iTunes card - it counts your money and prints out a redeemable code on your receipt. It's kind of awesome. You can get iTunes certificates, Borders cards, Amazon cards, AMC cards, etc. Their list is at http://coinstar.com/us/WebDocs/A1-0-3-1 and I think you can do a search to find your nearest machine.

9% is a joke. That's such a scam.

I am the one who sent this tip in. I guess I made a mistake by saying they now offer the gift certificate, they have been doing in for quite some time.

What I meant to say is that I just realized I could turn my spare change into iphone apps.

Sorry for the confusion.

Coins?

What the hell are those ? Some 20th century convention?

"But Ryan told us Coinstar now offers gift certificates instead of cash, if you want, minus the coin counting charge."

In San Francisco's Lucky Store, they are already spitting out the "Gift Cert" option, it is not "NEW" as far as I remember 2006/2007 .

Good tip though, with the old "feature" news.

Take Care,

Mudassir Azeemi
San Francisco, CA

Thanks for the tip on Commerce Bank, but free coin counting is not really worth a flight to New Jersey for me.

Does this work in Canada???

I just looked at the Coinstar.ca site, and there is no mention of certificates.

If I could load up an iTunes card or get certs, then I'd be all over it!!

...or you can just go to any Commerce bank and use their Penny Arcade to get bills for change for free, then spend it as you wish. I realize that Coinstar is a business, and maybe their fees are as low as they can go (although in this case, there don't seem to be any), but their rates simply aren't competitive.

In Canada you can't use an iTunes card (or store credit) for Applications. Only Music, Movies and TV. I just went through the whole ordeal with Apple trying to use my available credit for an Application. Couldn't do it.