What's the difference between Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins?
Gold Coins are play-money. They can never become anything. Sweeps Coins can be exchanged for real money once you have enough. If you're buying a package, you're buying Gold Coins — the Sweeps Coins come with it for free.
The single most useful habit: before you spin, check which balance is selected. Getting a good result on the wrong one is a disappointment that costs nothing to avoid.
Who this is for
Anybody in their first week on one of these sites.
Telling them apart
Look for a toggle near the top of the screen; the game itself will show whichever balance is active. The names differ — Gold Coins, GC, Sweepstakes Coins, SC, Sweeps Cash, Sweeps Coins — but the structure is the same everywhere.
The play-money balance is usually the bigger, showier number, and it's the one you're given a lot of. It is also the one that can never be redeemed for anything.
You can't buy the good one
You cannot buy the redeemable coins directly. They arrive as a free entry attached to something else, such as a purchase, a daily login, or a postal request.
It also means the exchange rate you think you're getting on a package is a bit of a fiction. You're buying play-money at a price, and the useful part is the free attachment.
What this means for your first session
Play the play-money balance to learn the games and find out whether you like the site. Save the sweepstakes balance for when you know what you're doing. It arrives attached to something else rather than being sold to you, and it's the only one that can turn into anything.
The tradeoffs
- Playing on the play-money balance teaches you the site without spending anything, if you already hold some. It also can't win you anything, so it gets boring.
- Saving the sweepstakes balance is sensible and dull, which is exactly what makes it easy not to bother with.
Where this answer stops
- Exchange rates and coin package contents change often, and we don't publish a table of them. The site's own purchase screen is the only current source.