Coinstar

This is your lucky day, folks, for I'm about to reveal what's in the bottom of my handbag. Goodness, it must feel like all your Christmasses have come at once. This dark, fusty recess, normally unexplored even by me, is about to be flaunted in the interests of the British economy. The Royal Mint, you see, says that £65 million of 1p coins have disappeared since their introduction in 1971. I reckon half of them are festering in my bag. So let's see: five ballpoint pens (chewed), one half-melted Freddo bar, three Fruit Salad sweets, four Boots money-off vouchers ­ expired Dec 2006, four batteries, one eyeliner (no lid), a ball of hair, 134,000 Tesco receipts, and, yes, among other coinage, eleven 1p pieces.

Granted, it's not the multimillion-pound windfall I'd hoped for, but it does support the Royal Mint's theory that the bulk of lost 1ps lurk for years in women's handbags, on car floors and down the back of sofas alongside dog hairs and two-year-old Twiglets.

No one wants the annoying bleeders. They are so valueless (even a penny chew now costs 2p) that small children can't be bothered picking them up in the street, despite their grandmothers wailing they will be cursed with bad luck. Plumbers are quite fond, since 1p coins falling from trouser pockets break thousands of washing machines, but that apart, people say, why not just abolish them? If shopkeepers will persist in the fanciful notion that 99p is psychologically more attractive a price-tag than £1 then why not create a 99p coin instead?

Why not? I'll tell you why not. Because Coinstar exists. Coinstar can be found in the foyers of supermarkets (it's Sainsbury's and Asda near me) and brings great joy to the nerdish shrapnel collectors of life. You see them queueing, giant whisky bottles in hand, to noisily pour a load of old copper into a machine which in turn spews out vouchers to exchange for cash or spend on life-enhancing purchases such as 800 Benson & Hedges.

I've used it and while it's true that wheeling a wicker bin full of loose change across a supermarket car park in a trolley isn't the coolest look, the feeling of disgorging a tonne of small change and receiving £133.27 in return is even more satisfying than making onanistic hand gestures at boy racers who drive while using a mobile phone. The machine takes 7.9p for every £1 it converts, which is laughably modest considering it's doing you a favour. Some parents tell their teenage offspring to lug the family coin stash to the supermarket as a "fun" way to bolster pocket money, though most teenagers treat this idea with contempt.

If you're a nice person you can give your proceeds to charity by pressing the "donate" option on the machine and posting off the voucher. If not, you can simply say "Sod that", and go forth smugly to stock up your wine rack.

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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