Coinstar
American company with a network of movie and video game rental kiosks as well as coin-cashing machines

Coinstar, LLC (formerly Outerwall, Inc.) is an American company operating coin-cashing machines.
Coinstar's focus is the conversion of loose change into paper currency, donations, and gift cards via coin counter kiosks which deduct a fee for conversion of coins to banknotes; it processes $2.7 billion worth of coins annually as of 2019. The company also operates Coinstar Exchange for gift cards. Coinstar's kiosks are in the front of stores (between the cash registers and the exit/entrance). The company has more than 60,000 kiosks offering a variety of services in the US, UK, Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the Eurozone. Coinstar also produces machines that provide prepaid credit cards and e-payment kiosks.
On July 2, 2013, Coinstar changed its name to Outerwall and started trading on the NASDAQ as OUTR.
On September 27, 2016, Apollo Global Management, LLC acquired Outerwall, Inc. and de-listed from NASDAQ. After the acquisition, former components of Outerwall—Redbox, Coinstar, and ecoATM (which includes Gazelle)—became separate business entities.
History
The company was founded in 1991 as Coinstar, Inc. and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington.
The public source identifies “Coinstar” as american company with a network of movie and video game rental kiosks as well as coin-cashing machines. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Coinstar, American and company.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Coinstar”, the useful work is to connect “american company with a network of movie and video game rental kiosks as well as coin-cashing machines” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5141641. 1 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2013, 2016 and 1991.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Coinstar”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Coinstar primary sources, Coinstar archive and Coinstar research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Coinstar”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Coinstar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.