Free Coin Exchanges Are a Thing Again at Las Vegas Casinos

By Scott Roeben, on July 18 2020
2 min read 9 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas WTF

For a long time, casino customers took their spare change (often pounds of it in a variety of
containers) to cashier cages, traded coins for “real money” and immediately blew the money gambling.

Casinos took coins readily, no charge. Because they sort of knew where the money would end up. It’s like when casinos provide free check cashing services. They’re just that selfless.

Casino coin exchange
These are our actual coins. As if you weren’t already up in our personal business enough.

Over time, charges for coin exchanges began to creep in, and many customers took their coins
elsewhere. The use of coins in slot machines also fell out of favor, so coins became even more scarce in casinos.

Thanks to the COVID crisis, there’s a nationwide coin shortage, and casinos are again offering free coin exchanges.

Coin shortage
Coin shortage mystery solved.

A number of Boyd Gaming casinos have started taking coins, free of charge.

Boyd coin exchanges
Boyd is going to be awash in coinage.

Four Queens and Binion’s were among the first Las Vegas casinos to ramp up their free coin exchange programs during the recent coin shortage.

To the credit of the cashier at Four Queens, he didn’t seem annoyed at all by our coin redemption, despite the fact most casino coin sorting machines were purchased around the same time “commercial air travel” was invented.

Four Queens cashier
Fun fact: In the coin world, “obverse” is the front face of a coin and “reverse” is the back face.

Below is the breakdown of our redemption.

We are not a math person, but we’re pretty sure this distribution of denominations is universal among people who collect spare change.

Four Queens coin exchange
Nickels and dimes are so jealous of the popularity of pennies and quarters right now.

Others had free coin exchanges all along. El Cortez and Ellis Island, among them. Of course, we’ve written about this before. We’ve apparently written about everything before.

We’ve used the coin exchange machine at El Cortez numerous times, partly because of the convenience, but also because we find the coin sorting very relaxing.


It was through our exchanging of coins to gamble we learned a red Solo cup holds about $60.

One of the great things about exchanging spare change for real money is, when you’re gambling, it doesn’t feel like real money. It feels “found.”

Cal coins
The Cal has enough challenges with the Hawaii travel restrictions. Turning in coins is the least we can do.

It’s well-known “found” money is much more fun to play! Stimulus checks. Divorce settlements. Tax refunds. Inheritances. The list goes on and on.

So, bag up those coins and take them to your favorite casino. Because, honestly, who has time to wait for a divorce to be finalized?