Company offers public a place to exchange all those pennies

Wednesday, June 4, 1997 | 10:33 a.m.

Southern Nevadans who are tired of hearing people disparage Las Vegas as a land of wall-to-wall slot machines will be happy to hear about a new company's perspective of the city: It's just a normal place.

That's the outlook of Coinstar Inc., a privately held company that has rolled out a fleet of 38 coins-to-cash machines at Lucky and Smith's supermarkets in the valley.

"To us, it's just another community," said Rod Brooks, vice president of sales and marketing for the Bellevue, Wash.-based company that charges 7 1/2 cents per dollar to sort buckets of coins and change it into currency.

Brooks said in most communities where Coinstar's 2,200 machines are located, customers enjoy the convenience of having machines available where they go two or three times a week -- at a supermarket.

So will Las Vegans pay 7.5 percent for something most casinos do for free?

"We've had machines on line here for about four weeks and we're encouraged so far," said Brooks. "We're doing better than we expected."

The reason, Brooks said, is that people won't sort coins to a casino to cash in their loose change. Besides, most casinos won't take pennies, the most popular denomination left lying around in jars and bedroom stashes.

Here's how Coinstar machines work: Following prompts similar to those offered by bank ATMs, customers are instructed to pour their unsorted coins into a bin in the front of the machine. From the bin, the change is pushed into a 600-coin-per-minute counter that displays a real-time report of the number of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters deposited.

When the count is completed, the machine calculates the total, deducts the 7.5 percent fee and issues a bar-coded voucher. The voucher can be redeemed for cash or store merchandise at a check stand.

Brooks said it's a good deal for the supermarket and his company, since many people use their vouchers to make transactions at the store. He would not disclose financial considerations between his company and the supermarkets.

In three years, Coinstar machines have counted 7 billion coins for 6 million customers. On average, a customer will dump $30 to $35 in coins into the machines per visit. The record submission: an $8,200 transaction by a California man.

"That's about three of those 5-gallon Sparkletts jugs full of coins," said Brooks. "He thought he had about $1,000 worth."

Most people underestimate the amount of money in a container by 100 to 200 percent, Brooks said.