Whenever I empty my pockets, I put small change in old whisky
containers. I've ended up after a few years with tonnes of the stuff
(1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, 20s). I would like to find an easy way to change
this back into notes. I live in London.

If the coins are still current, then your bank should oblige.

If the coins are not current, then try a coin dealer.

Tomhopkins --

This is actually quite curious to examine banking practices.  Some
U.S. banks have coin sorting machines but may place a service charge
on the practice (often 5%).  Some banks only take them in wrappers,
which hold varying numbers of coins --
Fifty 1-, 5-, 10- cent pieces
Twenty 25-cent pieces

(For some strange reason $1 coins aren't much used here.)

The major nuisance is that when you do take the wrapped rolls in, many
banks will require that you put name/address/phone on the wrappers. 
Scrooge is apparently fearful of getting cheated out of a penny in
each 50.  If you're prepared, you can generate a computer label to do
it -- if you walk into the bank unawares, it's just an irritant.  But
banks like to irritate people ;=)

Thus, it's often a task left to pre-teens to wrap and prepare those
coins.  American pre-teens do so gleefully; but a real teenager does
nothing gleefully.

Now we over here in the Colonies are prone to making a business of any
service, no matter how small, and a company called Coinstar has put
counting machines in 11,000 grocery stores.  Their cut to do the work
is 8.9%, providing the user  92 cents on the $1.00:
Coinstar
http://www.coinstar.com/coinstar2/cswebframe.nsf/GoHome

So, the reason that this is a Google Comment and not a Google Answer
(TM) is that I've done nothing to solve your core issue but only
indicated that if viewed as a worldwide issue, there may be an idea
for a business plan here.

Happy weekend,

Omnivorous-GA

Banks in the UK also charge their business customers who deposit or
withdraw notes or coins.

However, the banks that I use do not make any charge for this service
for their personal customers.

Here in the states we have machines at grocery stores that count your
change, and print a receipt good for food or cash at the checkout. If
you're interested I'll get the name of the company and see if they've
expanded to the UK. cheers

About Coinstar Inc.

Coinstar Inc. owns and operates the only multi-national network of
supermarket-based machines that offer self-service coin counting and
other electronic services. The company has more than 10,000 machines
linked by a sophisticated interactive network throughout the United
States, as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom.

try it, you'll like it... maybe you 'av to get to London>

I'm amazed that Coinstar is still in business. They rate they charge is outrageous!

Dear Tom Hopkins,

There are a number of solutions to this problem.

Coinstar
========

Softsail2 is right in that Coinstar machines exist in London (UK). 
Coinstar's annual report dated 21 March 2003:

http://biz.yahoo.com/e/030321/cstr10-k.html

claims 530 units in the United Kingdom.  From Coinstar's website: 

http://www.coinstar.com/

follow Machine Locator, UK Locations, England, and London, and you
will find listed Makro in North Acton, Sainsbury's Savacentres in Low
Hall and Merton, and Sainsbury's Supermarkets in Finchley Road, Penge,
and Whitechapel.  But this list must be out of date, as I know there
has been a machine in Sainsbury's at Gloucester Road for some time. 
You can donate your coins to charity; see:

http://www.unicef.org.uk/gettinginvolved/corporate/coinstar.htm
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/getinvolved/corporatepartnerships/workingtogether/jointpromotions/coinstar
http://www.redcross.org.uk/index.asp?id=3812

- or you can pay 7% for the privilege of having them converted to a
voucher which you can spend in the store.

Post Offices
============

Many (UK) crown post offices have machines which accept all coins and
dispense first and second class stamps.  If you ever post anything,
this is a way of converting small coins to something useful.

Other coin-in-the-slot machines
===============================

If you ever use coin-operated machines, you may find that you can
dispose of small coins in them.  If the coffee machine at work takes
small coins, get in the habit of emptying your pockets of these coins
there, rather than at home, and use the coins up in this way.

There is also a trick you can play on some coin-operated machines.  If
you put coins into a machine and then just press the refund button,
some systems will simply return the actual coins you inserted.  That's
no help.  Other systems will remember what combination of coins you
inserted and return exactly the same combination, albeit using
different actual coins.  That's no help, either.

But if you put in a combination of coins and get the machine to
dispense, say, your cup of coffee, the system is then forced to
calculate the total value of the coins in order to check that you have
paid enough and to evaluate how much change is due.  It now has to
decide how best to deliver the required change, and may well do so in
a more useful way than the particular combination you supplied: it all
depends on what change chutes it has and how well stocked they are. 
If you pick the right machine, you can choose substantially to overpay
in small-value coins and then receive your change in coins of larger
denomination.

I trust this helps.

Carnegie

Going to your bank and handing them over in bulk is easily the best bet.

(They've got scales.)

Who wants to fool around with coin machines, and at a cost?

Dear Tom Hopkins,

The stamp machines in (UK) crown post offices (see my comment above)
are more useful than I thought.  If you fill them with small coins and
then press the refund/change button, you will (may?) get your refund
in larger coins - even without buying a stamp.

Carnegie

A bank in my neighborhood (Commerce Bank) has a coin-sorting machine
which anybody can use at no charge.

/ephraim

Tom said that he had 'tonnes of the stuff' ...

TONNES.

This is not a trivial amount that can be hand carried to wherever ...

This is a materials handling problem of some magnitude ...

And think of the security risk!

Moreover, when Tom does bank his horde, what effect is this going to
have on the economy?

It will be highly inflationery, that's for sure because, after Tom's
enterprise becomes public knowledge, there will be copycats.