One man really felt the force of his accumulated coins when he finally cashed in his Star Wars piggy bank.
In a viral Threads post, Eli Piatt (@jsun4hees) shared a photo of his Coinstar receipt from a grocery store in Portland, Oregon, showing he walked away with $597.45 after dumping a decade of collected coins (4,945 to be exact) into the machine — however, he would’ve earned even more if he didn’t get hit with a sneaky fee that supposedly could’ve been avoided.
“It took ten years, but I finally filled my Star Wars piggy bank. Just cashed it in,” Piatt captioned the post alongside a photo of an itemized coin receipt.
The original stash totaled $686.61 — but thanks to a $89.16 Coinstar processing fee, a chunk of his treasure didn’t make it to his wallet.
Coinstar’s self-service kiosks — usually lurking in grocery stores — let you dump your loose change for cash, gift cards or charity.
The machines count the coins and spit out a voucher, but the cash comes with a fee, unless you choose an eGift Card, donate to a charity or send the coins to a partner bank account instead.
Piatt told The Post that he knew he could’ve “avoided the fee by getting a gift card,” but there were “no good options” at the store.
Well, leave it to the nosy bodies of social media to weigh in and give their two cents (no pun intended) on other ways he could’ve avoided the greedy fee: “You can go to any bank and not pay the $90 — don’t even have to have an account,” one person pointed out.
One other chimed in, writing, “Some banks, not all, have change counters … open an account with the money and they will do it for free.”
Another suggested a clever hack: pour coins through the self-checkout to pay for groceries, letting the machine count for you.
Ultimately, Piatt told The Post that he learned an “expensive lesson about reading fine print and taking your time.”
“Next time I empty my piggy bank, I will for sure roll the coins myself.”
“I do wish I had taken the time to roll the coins and take them to a bank because I did not know the fee would be that steep,” he explained.
Turns out, not even Jedi-level patience can beat Coinstar’s dark side — though a few tricks with bank change counters, self-checkout coins, or gift-card hacks might just do the job.
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