The Trick to Counting Coins in Your Laundromat Without Losing Your Mind

When I opened LaColada in Ponferrada more than ten years ago, one of the moments I dreaded most was closing the cash register. Emptying the coin boxes of the washers, dryers, and the change machine meant facing a mountain of metal that took me almost an hour to count and pack. At first, I did it by hand, coin by coin, until a colleague in the guild taught me a trick that changed my life.

If you have a vending business, a self-service laundry, or you just broke the piggy bank, forget about counting. Today I'm going to teach you the trick to counting coins using a simple kitchen scale. It's fast, it's precise, and it will save you hours of boring work.

The Science Behind the Trick: Standard Weight

Coins are not manufactured at random. The Mint follows millimeter standards. Each euro coin has an exact and constant weight. This means that if you know how much one coin weighs, you know how much a hundred weigh. It's pure mathematics.

Here is the official weight "cheat sheet" that I have taped to my office wall:

What You Need (and what you don't)

Many people think they need to buy an automatic coin counting machine for €200. I have one gathering dust in the warehouse. They jam, they are noisy, and they require maintenance. To apply this method, you only need:

• A digital scale: It doesn't need to be industrial. A kitchen one that weighs up to 3kg or 5kg and has a precision of 1 gram (or better, 0.1g) is perfect. They cost less than €15.
• Plastic containers: Tupperware or clean yogurt pots. One for each type of coin.
• A calculator: Or your mobile phone.

The Step-by-Step Method

Follow this process and I assure you you'll cash up in 5 minutes:

1. Sort: This is the only manual part. Empty the boxes and separate the coins by value. If you are lucky enough that your machines already separate them (some coin mechanisms do), you skip this step.
2. Tare the container: Put your empty pot on the scale and press the "TARE" or "ZERO" button so it reads 0.
3. Pour and Weigh: Pour in all the €1 coins, for example. Note the total weight. Let's say it's 750 grams.
4. Calculate: Divide the total weight by the weight of the coin.
   750 g / 7.5 g = 100 coins. You have 100 euros!

Expert Tips to Not Fail

Although the method is foolproof, dirt doesn't weigh the same as metal. Here are my tips:

1. Watch out for "Trash"

In laundry coin boxes, sometimes clips, lint, buttons, or foreign coins that people put in by mistake appear. Before weighing, take a quick look to remove any "intruder" that falsifies the weight.

2. Use Plastic Bags

If you take the money to the bank, they will probably ask for it to be in official plastic blisters. A trick is to put the empty blister on the scale, tare it, and fill it with coins until the scale marks the exact weight of the full blister (for example, a €1 blister is 25 coins = 187.5g). This way you fill and count at the same time.

3. Scale Precision

If you are going to weigh huge amounts (bags of €500), a kitchen scale may have a small margin of error. Weigh in batches of 1 or 2 kilos maximum to ensure not a single cent dances away.