I recently got back from Japan and I came back with a lot of yen coins, at the time before returning I did not know that it was not possible to exchange yen coins to notes. So I am now stuck with £52 in yen coins. The £52 is made up of a tiny amount of 50 yens loads of 100 yens and a few 500 yens.

Basically what I'm asking is: does anybody want to take these off my hands. I will be offering a reduced exchange rate to give insentive to sell them.

I prefer if you live in the UK but I will happily talk about sending to europe.

Oh and I can get photo proof if required.

Why did you collect a sack of coins in the first place? It seems kind of bizarre.

In my year and 8 months in Japan I've collected quite the pile of 1, 5, and 10 yen coins.

It was more like I didnt notice I was collecting it. I normally ended up putting change in a a bag back at the house i was staying at and carry notes with me.. sorta ended up piling up. Don't worry I know it was a stupid thing to do.

*edit* dont even get me started on the 1, 5 and 10s.

Womacks23 Wrote:In my year and 8 months in Japan I've collected quite the pile of 1, 5, and 10 yen coins.

I have only about 300 yen worth of all coins combined. Why not just do the mental math when you pay and use exact change, or at least reduce the amount returned?

I have a bigger problem with 1000 notes, since that's how most of my private students pay me (all but the hostess girls). I must have like 50,000 in 1000s in my wallet.

I dunno. I don't really like carrying things in my pockets. I really ought to go down to the banco soon though to cash in.

I collected all my 1/5/10 yen coins in a sack over my 15 months in Japan and then just took then to the post office bank a couple days before I left. They put it straight into my account without a fee.

52 pounds worth of coins! That's like 23 kilograms! That must have taken up a whole suitcase! (har har)

Womacks23 Wrote:I dunno. I don't really like carrying things in my pockets. I really ought to go down to the banco soon though to cash in.

You should have bought a Japanese wallet, almost all have a coin pouch within. I had to get one since Japanese notes are bigger than Canadian notes, so they stuck out of my Canadian wallet.

*cough*

*ahem*

Tax is included in the listed price so it is really easy to have exact change ready. In Japan, if the bill comes to 467 yen and I hand them 517 yen, whether they are much smarter than American cashiers or told never to question the customer, they don't bat an eye and give me my 50yen coin back.
In the US, if a bill comes to $4.67 and I hand the cashier $5.17, half the time she will push the change back and tell me I made a mistake.

It is scary how much easier it is to spend a 500 yen coin compared to a $5 bill :/

bodhisamaya Wrote:In the US, if a bill comes to $4.67 and I hand the cashier $5.17, half the time she will push the change back and tell me I made a mistake.:/

You would have been making a mistake - 50 cent coins aren't in regular circulation in the US.

Two quarters are much easier to carry around than 50 cents in pennies, nickles and dimes!

True, but it annoys cashiers when you treat them like an exchange service, which is why they give the look or ignore the extra money (they do it in Japan too).
-former cashier

Just want to add that the full £52 I will sell for around £40 which is a massive discount to give incentive to take it off my hands!

You can buy smaller amounts ofcourse.

Does that include free shipping (to Japan)?

In America, making a cashier put down her cell phone (if they do at all) to ring you up annoys them. So yea, I can see where forcing them to divide change into the individual slots of their drawer would cause them mental anguish.

I've heard people complain about that but I've never had that experience. I often give change to cashiers to make it equal quarters, and I never get any bad reactions from that.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Does that include free shipping (to Japan)?

Haha wish I could send it to japan, its £40 to send it there lol

I would take it as I am going to Japan next month but I don't know if its worth the trouble to send it to Germany.
Besides that, isn't it heavy? Actually I have no clue but carrying a lot of extra weight to Japan doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

It weighs 200grams. I cant belive how much it costs to send to germany.. £20. I dont exactly want to send it via normal post as its common for people to just steal it.

Guess I am going to have to go back to begging banks.

bodhisamaya Wrote:In America, making a cashier put down her cell phone (if they do at all) to ring you up annoys them. So yea, I can see where forcing them to divide change into the individual slots of their drawer would cause them mental anguish.

Taking in large amounts of small change can mess up the till's balance, and it takes a long time to count $5 in pennies and roll them, resulting in lineups and opportunities for theft of gas/goods. Paying in rolls doesn't improve the situation since the clerk must open the roll and confirm that it contains the correct amount.

More modern locations with computerized safes (cashier can request money to restore till balance) and automatic change dispensers/counters would alleviate those problems, but HQ is always super-cheap (my locations wouldn't even spring for outdoor security cameras).

Jarvik7 Wrote:True, but it annoys cashiers when you treat them like an exchange service, which is why they give the look or ignore the extra money (they do it in Japan too).
-former cashier

Probably depends on the kind of shop, I mean you shouldn't pull out the pennies in a fancy shop, but at a combini or more casual place I've found that in Japan cashiers are usually on the same page about trying to reduce the amount of change.

In Japan I use cash often so I got used to using my change and not building up a pile of it, but in the UK or the US I hardly ever use cash, and when I do I end up with lots of change that goes in a bottle.

In the UK I've never had a problem paying the exact amount. And if for example I try to buy £9.01 worth of stuff with a £10 note, some cashiers will even ask if I have the 1p. Other cashiers though seem bewildered if I try to do things like the latter- it's not that they don't want to cooperate, they just don't understand what I'm trying to do. Anyway, I do still end up with 1p, 2p and 5p coins coming in faster than I spend them...

bodhisamaya Wrote:In the US, if a bill comes to $4.67 and I hand the cashier $5.17, half the time she will push the change back and tell me I made a mistake.:/

Really? Where I live they just enter the Amount Tendered in the cash register and the machine tells them how much change to return. No problem for them, especially since they no longer are required to count the change back; they just dump it all - bills, change, receipt - in your hand.

Babyrat, I'll be mighty surprised if you find anyone who wants to lug that much coinage half way around the world.