Money Penny

Wow, there's been a lot of guesses of how many pennies in the bag. There's been guesses from $10 to $60.
So who is closest?... well, here's the story and you'll soon find out...

It all started about a month ago. I was sitting by the computer and decided to sort the pennies out of a giant jar of coins I had in my craft room.
Parker was sitting nearby and started helping me. I told him if he sorted all the pennies out of all the coin jars we had around the house, he could keep the money from the pennies.
At first this didn't seem like very much fun to Parker. We have many coin jars around and even in both of our cars. However, he was intrigued with this simple way to earn some extra money, but had no immediate need for cash, and so a couple weeks went by, but no sorting happened.

Then, Parker approached me with the need of a new video game. I told him of course I could get it for him.... for his birthday... in December... three months away... that's a long time to wait to a 11 year old. So the light bulb went off in his head...
"Hey Mom, remember that you said I could have the pennies if I sorted the coin jars? How much do you think I could get from that?"
I had no idea, but assured him he could do chores to earn the extra money if needed.

And so the sorting began....

It took a few days, since he only did one or two a day, to sort through all the jars we had around. He put all the pennies in the ziplock bag and put the silver coins back into the jars.

Finally he was finished sorting and ready to cash them in...

So we took the bag to a Coinstar and I explained to Parker that they keep 9% of the total so he wouldn't get the full amount. He was ok with this and in his mind, he hoped to get $35 out of this bag of pennies.

And so the counting began....
It took about 15 minutes for the machine to sort through all the pennies... (plus two dimes and one nickel)

So how much was in there?.......

3580 pennies for a total of $35.80 less the fee.
(So I believe my friend Crystal on Facebook guessed closest at $35)

I couldn't believe there was that much money just in pennies in that gallon ziplock bag.
Parker was pretty excited and just because I'm nice I threw in the coins from my wallet and it brought his take home total to $36.

He had enough for his game and some to spare.
Parker thinks this is a pretty cool way to get some extra cash and is ready to do this agian sometime.
I wonder how much money is left in the jars now there is only silver coins...
now that could be interesting....