Entries this day: susan_b_anthony

susan b anthony

31 January 1999

Today Manda and I found a really cool thing at the post office.

For a long time, they've had a stamp vending machine that takes bills (20s, 10s, 5s, 1s) and coins (quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies, and susan b anthony dollars). Some weeks ago, I found that I could purchase stamps with only pennies, a great way to spend them, and keep from having to roll them!

But today we were purchasing stamps with a bunch of pennies out of Manda's car's coin dish and I noted that the coins it gave back as change were not the same as the ones we were putting in. Hmmm. Therefore, it must simply keep track of how much change is owed, but not actually what coins were used. Therefore, to return change in the most efficient and polite manner, it will give big change back and not a bunch of pennies.

Hmmmm. How far can we take this?

It would be nearly too good to be true if we can put in 100 pennies, ask for change back and get dollar coins! So we put in 4 nickels and 5 pennies and asked for change back and it said

           **************************************
           ****  NO CHANGE WITHOUT PURCHASE  ****
           **************************************

Dang. Oh well... Wait! Okay, so we put in a bunch more coins (we were out of pennies) and wonderfully enough, ended with a total of $1.34 in the machine. Most of it had been dimes.

Pressed C 2 and ordered one 33 cent stamp and ka-chunk ker-plink 1 susan b anthony and 1 penny dropped into the change slot. Beautiful.

I've got a whole pile of pennies to convert. permalink