I happened across an article about Coinstar (see www.coinstar.com) in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. Had never heard of this company but it turns out they have coin counting machines in many supermarkets across the nation. One option is to donate the value of your coins to one of the main charities that you can select from. If your charity isn't on the list (OCF isn't), you can simply cash out and send a check or get a money order directly from the store and write it to OCF.

We happened to have a huge can of coins that we've been adding to for the past 10 years with no intention of ever rolling them. It was more to lighten the load from wallets or pockets. So this was a great way to get rid of a bunch of coins (turned out to be just under $175) and give the proceeds to a good cause.

You just press a few buttons to start the process, throw your coins in a hopper (repeatedly in our case) and the machine sorts them and counts them and gives you a voucher at the end that you cash at the store.