Did you know that you can turn your old jar of coins into a Steam gift card?
And we don’t mean through the arduous process of collecting said coins, buying some coin rolls, rolling all those coins into their appropriate designations, then taking them to a bank to be converted into bills or digital lucre. We’re talking direct exchange--coins go in, Steam gift card comes out.
Coinstar is here to make the magic happen. You may remember Coinstar from those giant green machines at your local grocery store that turns coins into usable forms of money. Normally those machines charge an absolutely ludicrous fee for turning worthless pennies into paper: 11.9% of your total, last we checked.
Could you imagine going into a bank with your carefully rolled coins and having the teller say they’d be taking 12 cents on every dollar just because you had the temerity to waltz in there with $300 in quarters? It’s unthinkable.
Coinstar might realize that public perception is against them. That’s why they’re now offering gift cards instead of cash with zero fees, no strings attached.
Here’s how it works: you show up with a boatload of coins and carefully feed them into the machine. You then select what sort of gift card you’d like to get in return. The machine then performs its magic and provides you with an eGift card for the amount of coins you put in.
Several game purveyors are on the list of participating companies, including Steam, GameStop, and Amazon. For some reason known only to Coinstar, each has their own minimum and maximum amounts that can be converted into gift cards. Steam can accept a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $100, while GameStop can accept anywhere from $5 to $500 in coins.
Amazon has the largest range of all, allowing for $5 to $1,000 in coins. Whether or not a Coinstar machine can contain $1,000 worth of quarters is a question we’d love to know the answer to.
Other, non-game-related companies are also involved, including Gap, IHOP, Domino's Pizza, AMC Theatres, Applebee's, Southwest Airlines, Chili's Bar & Grill, and more. All of them will provide paper gift cards containing codes for the amount you provided in coins with absolutely zero fees.
So it’s time to take that piggy bank and turn it into a game that you’ll add to your Steam backlog and never actually play. But at least you didn’t pay any fees.
Source: Reddit