Using Euro coins as weights (2004)

I'm using euro cents as weights in my weighted vest.

When I started doing this I didn't want to afford dedicated weights as it seemed like a waste of money, but I had many cents saved up from my childhood, which I started to use instead.

I have roughly 15kg in euro cents in my vest and I'm regularly talking walks with it.

To get one kilo you need 435 cents and it turns out that in Germany you can also "buy" coins "for free" at the "Bundesbank", that is, you can exchange actual money for weights without any fees. You give 4 euros and 35 cents and you get a kilo. Once you need the money back, you can also sell those coins back to them for free.

You can also go to the beach and get unlimited amounts of weight for free too. That's what's most budget weights are made of

I don't mean to argue that it's just gimmick and any sane person would just use sand, but to be completely fair, sand is much less dense than steel, so if the coins pack well it does make a better weight.

I do also suspect that there must be some product that must be more cost effective than coins but denser than sand, but cannot think of it right away. I mean, scrap steel is a couple of cents per kg.

Olympic weight plates for barbells. They're widely used, so competition has brought the cost down, and they're easily available in useful increments. I currently see 4x 10lbs for <$50 on Amazon. That works out to 2,53 Euro per kg. So cheaper than euro cents. They may not have the exact shape you need.

The scrap steel probably didn't cost cents per kg when it was sold for its original purpose. You are paying for a useful shape.

A professional equivalent of weighted vests are ballistic plate carriers. Real ballistic plates can be fragile and expensive, so options for exercising in (or milsim games in airsoft etc.) include expired (and failed to re-certify) real ballistic plates, made for purpose training plates... or plate shaped sandbags!