HJL,
I had a bunch of change in the console of my car, a lot actually. I was thinking about using Coinstar to count it and give me cash, but I didn’t want to pay the fee. So, I went to their website. The option to get cash back is still there (they take 10.9%), but now they also offer an electronic-gift certificate from various vendors with no fee to such places as Amazon.com, Lowes, iTunes, and more.
So at lunch I put all the change into a small box, found a Coinstar machine at a QFC, carefully went through the menus, and specified I wanted an Amazon.com gift certificate, fed in the coins, and *boom* got a $74.33 certificate.
I just entered the gift-certificate code into my Amazon.com account, and it accepted the code.
So if you’ve got a lot of change laying around… 🙂 – P.S.