600 pounds of oil-soaked pennies turned into cold, hard cash

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    PEACHTREE CITY, Georgia (WGCL) — Thursday, bin trolleys showed up and rolled in to save Andreas Flaten from a slippery pile of headaches.

“Finally getting all this taken care of, I was dreading, thinking I was going to have to go through hours and hours of cleaning this and these guys have absolutely saved me,” Andreas Flaten said.

After months of battling with his former boss at A Ok Walker Auto Works in Peachtree City for his final check, Flaten explained that nearly $1000 was delivered in the form of over 90k pennies.

“It’s just such a childish and petty thing to do,” Flaten told CBS46 NEWS.

Put another way, the pennies weighed nearly 600 pounds. It got worse because the mountain of brown coins arrived soaked in some type smelly, slipper, and shiny automotive oil.

“I had no idea what I was gonna do with them. I had already tried like attempted to clean up and it took me two hours to get about five bucks worth,” Flaten explained.

Flaten wasn’t the only one being put to work; the tires on his wheelbarrow literally collapsed under pressure. Flaten told CBS46 News he was unsure if he was going to be able to spend the coins. Enter Jeff Lail, the vice-president of North American operations for Coinstar heard about the over half-ton problem.

“Both the oil and the weight are going to make it very difficult for Mr. Flaten to transport these coins,” Lail told CBS46 News.

Lail and Coinstar decided to take on Flaten’s problem,

“We’ll take this directly to our processing partner, and it’ll be cleaned and wrapped and counted and re-circulated,” Lail said.

Lail is unsure how his company will deal with the coins; but he and his team kept their word. After nearly 15 minutes of collecting the Abe Lincoln faced coins, Lail handed Flaten 10 crisp, clean, and most importantly, oil-free hundred dollar bills.

“I’m just happy I don’t have to wash the pennies myself,” Flaten told CBS46 News.

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