Half an hour of looking for spare change in junkyard cars will net you enough for to get you a decent lunch.
Go to any junkyard for parts, and you’ll often find spare change left in cupholders, glove boxes, under seats, etc.
But, have you ever wondered just how much change you can find if you went through each and every car?
An employee at a salvage yard did just that to a sample size of cars.
Whoever runs social media at Auto Parts City in Gurnee/Park City, IL went through two rows of cars destined for the crusher, collected all the change he could find, and went to a Coin Star to count it all out.
Here’s his video.
Armed with a Dunkin’ Donuts cup, this Auto Parts City employee went through each car.
I counted 13 cars, a…
- Kia Rondo
- Kia Forte
- Chevrolet Spark
- Toyota Camry
- Cadillac SRX
- Chrysler 300
- Pontiac Grand Am
- BMW 3-series
- Chevrolet Impala
- (2) Ram 1500
- Chevrolet Equinox
- and a Kia Sedona
As you can see in the screenshots below, these weren’t a bunch of neatly tossed, clean coins, they were typically just a bunch of sticky pennies cemented to the bottom of cupholders, and door handles, sitting there probably for years.
Salvage cars aren’t known for being the cleanest so, even though he was double gloved, there’s a always a chance of getting pricked.
Just take a look at this Pontiac Grand Prix. Gross!
After all that scrounging around, as shown in the screenshot below, this is how many coins he collected, enough to almost fill the cup.
And, after pouring all those coins into a Coinstar machine, this is how much he profited.
Note, Coinstars in Illinois take 12.5 percent+.50 transaction fee so, without fees, he really netted $15.90.
That’s roughly 1.22 per car.
Those in the comments replied with some interesting outliers.
“I work at an auto dealership as a car detailer and somebody traded in a used Toyota and the glove box was full of change. Counted it out. It was over $200.00,” @bassmaster-w1mie commented.
“The most I found in a junkyard car was $20. That car was at least semi clean,” @i8038sx added.
“When I used to recondition used washers and dryers I would frequently find change, even dollar bills, inside clothes dryers. Sometimes change could be found in the bottom of the washer tubs.,” @redheath3860 replied.
If these were cars with clean interiors free of the errant drug needle, this might be worth cleaning out just for the coins.
The risk of getting cut and infection, if the coins aren’t clean, in plain sight, and visually confirmed to be needle free, harvesting change from salvage cars, at least in Illinois, just ain’t worth it.
However, after an afternoon of part hunting, you get might hungry. If you can dodge anything that’ll poke you, you may get enough change to pay for lunch.
