BELLEVUE, WA, Aug 3, 2001/ FW/ --- An Alaska man has broken the national all-time penny cash-in record, by cashing in 792,141 pennies or $7,921.41 through one of Coinstar's supermarket-based machines in Anchorage. He breaks a record set in January of this year in Baltimore, Maryland. In that case the customer processed 310,928 pennies or $3,109.28. Not only has he broken the penny record, he also has the largest volume of coin collected by a single customer to date with approximately 978,541 pennies.

Fifty-seven year old Sylvester Neal estimates it took him nearly 27 hours to cash in his pennies. Neal began by taking $5,000 worth of pennies in $500 batches to Coinstar machines throughout Anchorage. He cashed in his last batch of coins yesterday. Starting at 9:00 a.m., Coinstar helped Neal load his numerous jars of pennies into an armored car and transported them to a Carrs/Safeway where Neal processed 288,141 pennies, finally concluding at 7:45 p.m.

A lover of pennies, Neal's decision to cash-in his collection of 'Abe Lincolns' came after making plans to relocate from Anchorage to Auburn, Washington. Learning that moving the five-ton collection of pennies would be too expensive, Neal decided to save his prized collection of nearly 200,000 pre-1974 pennies, and cash-in the remaining coins.

Neal's nearly one million penny collection started as a childhood hobby. What the retired fire marshal probably did not realize 40 years ago when he began collecting pennies, is that his hobby would turn into a financial windfall worth nearly $10,000 and help pay for some of his moving costs to Washington.

"I would pass on a nickel, but NEVER a penny!" explains Neal, who has pennies from every year since 1900 except for the years 1916 and 1923, "it's been a fun hobby." Neal plans to start a new penny collection once he is settled in to his new home in Auburn, Washington.

Neal is not the only penny-loving American. A recent Coinstar National Currency Poll found penny has quite a loyal following with 65% of Americans responding they would like Congress to keep the penny in circulation.

"It takes the average person 1 hour to count $13.50 worth of pennies, at this rate it would have taken Sylvester more than 555 hours to hand-count, wrap and role his penny collection," said Rich Stillman, chief operating officer, Coinstar. "We were pleased to put our machines to work for Sylvester -- at a rate of 600 coins per minute, we accomplished the job much faster and just in time for his move." Coinstar, which maintains a network of more than 8,800 coins to cash machines throughout the country, including 16 machines throughout Anchorage, provides transportation assistance to customers with unusually large collections of coins estimated in value of $3,000 or more.

Sylvester Neal's record cash-in helps celebrate another Coinstar milestone. This year marks the company's 10th anniversary of processing America's change. Since 1991, Coinstar has processed more than $3.8 billion in coins weighing 298,000 tons for nearly 125 million customers, making them America's leading experts on coin-saving habits in the U.S.

Neal is a retired State Fire Marshal from the State of Alaska and a retired Safety Coordinator for the Anchorage Daily News. He has lived in Anchorage most of his life, is married and has five children. Neal is also a member of the Kiwanis Club of Anchorage, and will take office as Governor-Elect at the Kiwanis District Convention in Wenatchee, Washington later this month.