Foreign coins - what to do with them ?

[KangarooKenny]

I’ve got a bag of foreign coins that I don’t know what to do with. I can’t bear to dispose of them, but I’m fed up of moving them around the house.
What can I do with them ?

Donate them? I think some charity collections accept foreign currency. Or bring them on your next BA flight - they collect any form of currency as part of their Flying Start campaign.

Or let your kids (or someone else's) have them as play money?

Not going on a BA flight and kids are too old for play money !
I was wondering if there was a charity I could send them to.

RNIB accept them. Can’t link on iPad but if you google its easy to find. They send you a prepaid box to send your currency.

I’m pretty sure any decent sized charity shop will accept them if you just hand them in at the till. They collect them all up & sell them.

Put them on freecycle or local listing. I am sure someone will take them for free.

We had this problem - husband used to travel hugely for work, involving currencies we would be unlikely to use again - lots of charity shops will take them, and I’ve seen signs in a couple of local ones stating this.

Thanks all. I’ll look around.

Exactly this.

Also many banks have schemes to collect/donate foreign currency.

Next time at airport dump them in the big foreign currency boxes that they then give to charity

Not going to an airport until next year, and they are usually when you are arriving home. I don’t want to carry them around with me.

Put them in any charity collecting box. The charity will gather all of the non-UK coins and out of date coins a few times a year and send them to a company that pays for them.

You'd be shocked at the amount of foreign coins and old sterling coins that are found in every collecting box.

I’m always coming across random coins in my drawers of loose change - left over from holidays or given to me by accident. If that was the coinage that was circulating in Germany at the time then obviously some of it will have made its way into other countries, so it’s no more weird than finding a one cent coin mixed in with your pennies. Obviously the swastika is a powerful symbol and does make you feel a bit freaked out when you come across it in an unexpected place, but I don’t think a foreign coin turning up amongst other coins is particularly odd.