Euro Coin News
News, updates and announcements from Ken Mitteldorf, the owner of Euro Coin Exchange.
News, updates and announcements from Ken Mitteldorf, the owner of Euro Coin Exchange.
To coincide with the opening of our new office in the UK, Euro Coin Exchange is proud to announce a new initiative to promote the donation of foreign coins as a way to support your favorite charities.
Since its earliest days, our company has promoted foreign coins and other currency as a charitable giving vehicle. You can still donate euros, pounds or Canadian coins to support the Red Cross or CARE’s relief efforts in Haiti. If you would like to see your foreign coins (including Yen) aid in Japan’s recovery from the earthquake and tsunami and their lingering after-effects, we can assist you. Old Italian lira and Dutch guilders (banknotes only) can support global humanitarian projects. Closer to home, you can buy holiday gifts for kids in foster care with your Canadian coins, your old Irish pounds can now help promote traditional Irish music and dance in the Atlanta area, or your own local group can collect unwanted Canadian coins as a simple and easy fundraiser.
As we designed our UK website and customer payment system, one of the requirements we imposed upon ourselves was to make charitable giving a major focus. Thanks to the efforts of our UK Director, Christian Rayner, we have a simple and elegant way to support thousands of different charities. When our UK customers send in their euro coins in exchange for pounds, they can conveniently choose among any of the 162,000+ registered charities in England or Wales, and have a check made payable to their selected organization mailed directly to the charity or to the customer. In addition, if a friend or colleague is raising money for charity via the Just Giving website, UK customers can elect to have the proceeds from their leftover or unwanted euros credited directly to their beneficiary’s JustGiving account, referencing the customer’s name. Our customer can verify their contribution through the Just Giving website.
We plan to add more options for giving in the upcoming months, and hope to incorporate the system we launched in the UK on our US website soon.
Update August 18, 2011: We have redesigned the Charitable Giving section of our website, and modified our internal procedures, to allow our US customers to donate their foreign coins and paper money to virtually any charity of their choice, either directly or through JustGiving’s US counterpart, www.FirstGiving.com!
We’ve got some exciting news for our friends in the UK who have been asking us to open an office to buy their euro coins for pounds. The new office is officially open, along with a separate website specifically for our UK customers. You sent us the Beatles; we sent you us. Hardly an even trade, but who ever said life was fair?
Until recently, customers in the UK needed to mail or courier their coins and banknotes across the Atlantic in order to use our service. Not anymore. Now they have the convenience and affordability of converting their euro coins into pounds by mail, dealing with the most trusted name in the business, and without paying international postal rates.
Our UK launch is somewhat of a “soft opening.” We are only buying euro coins and banknotes (no other currencies for the time being). In the UK we buy all euro coins – right down to the pennies. For customers who wish to exchange pre-euro banknotes (German marks, French francs, etc.), that business is still being handled through our US office only. The good news is that postage to the US when sending banknotes is far less than you might expect. Postage via Royal Mail for a dozen banknotes and our packing slip in a standard business envelope is roughly £2. Delivery time is generally less than a week, and we can pay you in pounds, dollars or euros (your choice) via PayPal, so you will have your cash in hand instantly.
If you live anywhere in the UK and have euro coins left over from a holiday or business trip, or a box of coins accumulated over several years, you now have an ideal way to exchange your euro coins for sterling. Please visit our new website. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, we would welcome your enquiry. The Director of our UK operation, Christian Rayner, is also available if you have any special business needs related to your euro coins.
Contact info:
+44 1344 206226
Freephone (w/in the UK): 0800 612 4465
Postal address:
ECE – Processing Centre
PO Box 4201
BRACKNELL
RG42 9NP
It’s probably not too much of a stretch to say that nearly every home in America has a stash of Canadian coins sitting in a drawer. Somewhere along the line, somebody in the household started pulling Canadian coins out of their pocket change, tossed it in a jar, and said “someday I’ll spend those coins in Canada.”
We’ve decided to help send those Canadian coins back home for the holidays, and benefit kids in foster care in the process.
Here in the Atlanta area, where we call home, everyone (it seems) listens to syndicated radio talk show host and consumer advocate Clark Howard. Every year around Christmas time, Clark broadcasts live from area Walmart stores and collects donations from his loyal listeners for one of his (and our) favorite causes: a program he calls Clark’s Christmas Kids. 2011 marks the 20th year that Clark has collected gifts and money to provide holiday gifts for children in foster care. According to his website, Clark’s Christmas Kids Campaign collects about half of all the gifts Georgia Department of Family and Children’s Services gives to children in foster care each year.
From now through Christmas, when you send your Canadian coins to us in exchange for US dollars, insert the Promo Code “KIDS” on your packing slip and we will make your check payable to Clark’s Christmas Kids. We’ll send your check directly to Clark, in your name, and provide you with proof of payment. To thank you for your generosity, we’ll increase our best available rate on Canadian coins by 5%.
And we’ll do our best to get those Canadian coins home for the holidays.
Do you have more than 25 pounds of Canadian coins you’d like to donate? Give us a call toll-free at 855-EUROCOIN (855-387-6264) and we’ll pay your shipping cost.
On June 24, Euro Coin Exchange was featured on Business Hour with Ron Comacho, a weekly business radio program carried by America’s Web Radio. I spent an enjoyable morning chatting with Ron about our little corner of the currency exchange business, the services we offer and some of the challenges we face as a small business in a tough economy. You can listen to my interview by clicking on Ron’s Listen button.
If you have old French francs sitting in a dresser drawer, or Finnish banknotes you’ve been saving from your college trip to Helsinki, the time to cash them in is rapidly approaching.
“What – those things are still good?” Yes, you can still cash in some, but not all, paper currency from back in the days before the euro. But here’s the catch, some of those notes expire shortly after New Year’s Day, 2012. Euro Coin Exchange will buy your French and Finnish notes through December 31, 2011.
Here are the details. Most French banknotes have already expired and are now worthless. There are still five varieties, millions of which are still in circulation, which can still be cashed in and exchanged for euros. You can find pictures of the five French notes here. French franc coins have all been de-monetized, so you can keep using them as poker chips. As for the Finnish paper money, Finland’s central bank still allows all Finnish markka to be redeemed for euros, but the absolute deadline expires in early 2012.
We will buy all of your Finnish banknotes, regardless of date of issue, and five specific French bills, only through December 31, 2011. We do not buy old French or Finnish coins. Don’t let your foreign money expire worthless.
In addition to French and Finnish currency, we also convert the old paper money from nine other euro-zone countries into dollars: Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Despite what your bank or the clerk at the currency exchange may have told you, you can still get US dollars in exchange for these pre-euro currencies. See our Rates page for pricing, and consult our country-specific pages for pictures of the notes we will redeem.
Although we will not buy Italian lira or Dutch guilder paper money (it’s a long story related to each of those countries’ conversion to the euro), we will accept them and donate them on your behalf to global humanitarian organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross.
So the message here is clear. If you have old European paper money wasting away at home, cash it in NOW!
