I will assume that you have some pennies. Then since $10.00 is 1000 cents, a multiple of 5, you must have a multiple of 5 pennies. So the smallest number of pennies we can have is 5. That makes that the smallest number of nickels we could have would be 6. We will have the greatest possible number of quarters if we have the least possible number of pennies, nickels and dimes. That would be 5 pennies, 6 nickels and 7 dimes, which is 105 cents. Since 1000-105 = 895. When we divide that by 25, we get 35.8. So that tells us we cannot have more than 35 quarters. Hmmm! Let's see if that's possible. 5 pennies, 6 nickels, and 35 quarters. That's a total of: coins money pennies 5 $ .05 nickels 6 .30 quarters 35 $8.75 ----------------------- totals 46 $9.10 So we have 9 coins to go and 90 cents to go in dimes, and so -- eureka! That's easy. We can get that with 9 dimes. So we end up with: coins money pennies 5 $ .05 nickels 6 .30 dimes 9 .90 quarters 35 $8.75 ----------------------- totals 55 $10.00 Edwin