Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 22, 1995 TAG: 9502220051
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BUFFALO, N.Y. LENGTH: Medium
The one constant to personal finance, Bruce Stenzel figures, is that people hoard change - in piggy banks, milk jars, coffee cans and buckets.
A change hoarder since he was a boy, Stenzel has parlayed his passion for pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters into a $157 million business. Continental Coin Processors Inc. converts coins into paper currency within minutes for vendors, pay-phone operators, video arcade owners and others who just have too much change on their hands.
``People have fetishes. Some people collect cigarette lighters or matchboxes or salt-and-pepper shakers,'' Stenzel said. ``I saved change. And the thought I always had was, there's no way for me to get rid of it.''
Founded in 1991, Continental Coin operates out of a Buffalo warehouse that's a coin hoarder's paradise, filled with old-time safes, penny gum ball machines, canvas sacks of change and dozens of piggy banks.
This month, the company introduced self-service sorters - dubbed automatic coin machines - at banks, where people can deposit change directly into their accounts or get cash back for it.
Automatic coin machines were installed at three Citibank branches in western New York state this month; Continental Coin said it plans to have at least 100 more in other banks and in supermarkets by year's end.
The company charges a 1.2 percent commission for processing coins at its warehouse in Buffalo, and 5 percent for its self-operated machines. The privately held company has declined to disclose its profits.
The company has expanded to Rochester and Albany, N.Y., and licensed its name and equipment to a California group that opened a coin-processing center in Los Angeles last year.
Large vendors often have their own coin-processing setups, but small ones could make good use of services like Continental Coin's, said Tim Sanford, executive editor of Vending Times, a trade journal that estimates Americans spent $28 billion in vending machines last year.
J.C. Pearl Ltd. of Buffalo, which operates 300 pay phones around New York, used to count its change with an old, clunky coin sorter, then lug it to the bank. The money would be tied up for up to five days while the bank counted it to verify the amount, said company owner Carmine Pearl.
Now, Continental Coin handles the change and cuts a check that Pearl can deposit at the bank the same day.
Continental Coin ``took a no-brainer and turned it into one hell of a marketable item,'' Pearl said. ``If you put an hourly rate on my time, it's really been worth it to have them sorting the coins instead of me.''
Even banks and armored-car companies, faced with high overhead to store coins, have farmed out their change processing to Continental Coin.
Sandy Minoian, manager of a Citibank branch in Niagara Falls where one of the machines was installed, says the coin sorters make getting rid of change quick and painless.
``It's fun watching [customers], because they act like it's a slot machine,'' Minoian said. ``They act like they've won something, even though they're getting back their own money.''
by CNB