Toronto, ON >> Headlines >> World >> Texan's trek north to cash in Canadian coins acquired at auction pays off
Texan's trek north to cash in Canadian coins acquired at auction pays off
Lauren La Rose, THE CANADIAN PRESS 2008-11-26 16:40:00
TORONTO - A Texas man's cross-border trek to cash in a large number of Canadian coins acquired at auction has paid off with a tidy sum just in time for the holidays.
Michael Lay crossed the border with 42 bags of assorted Canadian coins worth $4,211 that he cashed in at a Coinstar Centre in a Hamilton supermarket Tuesday.
The machine accepts loose, unsorted change without having to be wrapped or rolled, and provides a voucher for value of the change which can be converted to cash or applied to in-store purchases, said Coinstar spokeswoman Marci Maule.
Maule said Lay had called the company's customer service department and mentioned he was going to Connecticut to visit his daughter, who attends Yale Law School, and was thinking of heading to Canada to cash in the coins.
As a collector, Lay said he is interested in foreign and collectible coins, but admits he took a chance buying the bags at a Houston auction not knowing exactly what the contents were.
The coins he purchased originally came from a Houston-area bus company, which over the years had collected them from passengers who had used them as bus fare. The problem was the coins were either no longer in circulation or weren't legal tender in the U.S.
Along with the large amount of Canadian coins, the collection included a rare two-cent coin from the U.S. Civil War era, several 1930s Canadian nickels, a liberty head half-dollar piece and several Chuck E. Cheese restaurant tokens.
"I did get a whole lot of junk pieces, tokens, some things I had never heard of ... but there were a lot of good things in there," Lay said in a phone interview Wednesday at a car dealership in New Haven, Conn., where his daughter's car was being repaired.
"I feel like I've at least doubled the money that we spent at the auction."
This isn't the first time the coin bags, which Lay acquired in 2006, have yielded rich rewards. Last year, he sent a friend returning home to Canada for the holidays with $1,250 in Canadian quarters to cash them in.
While banks that handle international currency are happy to accept paper money, Lay said none of them would deal with foreign coins. That was the big problem for the bus company, and the reason they put the coins up for auction in the first place, he explained.
Lay, vice-president of information technology for a global manufacturing company, is a longtime coin collector, a hobby he first took up a half-century ago.
While attending college in the 1970s, he once sold his collection to help cover his tuition costs when he fell short one semester.
The 57-year-old said he plans to hang onto the rare Civil War-era and older Canadian coins for now, but didn't rule out the possibility of auctioning them off down the road.
As for the money he cashed in Canada, he plans to use some of it for holiday spending and helping out his family.
"With our daughter going to law school, she's always needing a hand with this or that - like the car repair for today," Lay said, chuckling.
Michael Lay crossed the border with 42 bags of assorted Canadian coins worth $4,211 that he cashed in at a Coinstar Centre in a Hamilton supermarket Tuesday.
The machine accepts loose, unsorted change without having to be wrapped or rolled, and provides a voucher for value of the change which can be converted to cash or applied to in-store purchases, said Coinstar spokeswoman Marci Maule.
Maule said Lay had called the company's customer service department and mentioned he was going to Connecticut to visit his daughter, who attends Yale Law School, and was thinking of heading to Canada to cash in the coins.
As a collector, Lay said he is interested in foreign and collectible coins, but admits he took a chance buying the bags at a Houston auction not knowing exactly what the contents were.
The coins he purchased originally came from a Houston-area bus company, which over the years had collected them from passengers who had used them as bus fare. The problem was the coins were either no longer in circulation or weren't legal tender in the U.S.
Along with the large amount of Canadian coins, the collection included a rare two-cent coin from the U.S. Civil War era, several 1930s Canadian nickels, a liberty head half-dollar piece and several Chuck E. Cheese restaurant tokens.
"I did get a whole lot of junk pieces, tokens, some things I had never heard of ... but there were a lot of good things in there," Lay said in a phone interview Wednesday at a car dealership in New Haven, Conn., where his daughter's car was being repaired.
"I feel like I've at least doubled the money that we spent at the auction."
This isn't the first time the coin bags, which Lay acquired in 2006, have yielded rich rewards. Last year, he sent a friend returning home to Canada for the holidays with $1,250 in Canadian quarters to cash them in.
While banks that handle international currency are happy to accept paper money, Lay said none of them would deal with foreign coins. That was the big problem for the bus company, and the reason they put the coins up for auction in the first place, he explained.
Lay, vice-president of information technology for a global manufacturing company, is a longtime coin collector, a hobby he first took up a half-century ago.
While attending college in the 1970s, he once sold his collection to help cover his tuition costs when he fell short one semester.
The 57-year-old said he plans to hang onto the rare Civil War-era and older Canadian coins for now, but didn't rule out the possibility of auctioning them off down the road.
As for the money he cashed in Canada, he plans to use some of it for holiday spending and helping out his family.
"With our daughter going to law school, she's always needing a hand with this or that - like the car repair for today," Lay said, chuckling.
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