2023 AMC 8 Problems/Problem 14

Problem

Nicolas is planning to send a package to his friend Anton, who is a stamp collector. To pay for the postage, Nicolas would like to cover the package with a large number of stamps. Suppose he has a collection of 20 of each of 5 cent, 10 cent, and 25 cent stamps. What is the GREATEST number of stamps that Nicolas can use to make exactly $7.10 in postage?

A:45 B:46 C:51 D:52 E:55

==Solution== The maximum amount of money in postage he can make with his collection of stamps is 20(5+10+25) = 800 cents, or$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg)8. To make 7.25 left, and the way to remove 15 cents from that while removing the least number of stamps is by removing 1 10 cent stamp and 1 5 cent stamp. That will make $7.10 in postage, and he will have removed 5 total stamps: 3 25 cent stamps, 1 10 cent stamp, and 1 5 cent stamp. Since he has 20(3) = 60 stamps in his entire collection, the number of stamps used is 20(3) - 5 = 55, so the answer is E.

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Animated Video Solution

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Written Solution

Most stamps make You have 20 of each coin, nickles, dimes and quarters.

If we want to have the most amount of stamps we have to have the most amount of smaller value coins. We can use 20 nickels and 29 dimes to bring our total cost to . However when we try to use quarters the 25 cents don’t fit evenly, so we have to give back 15 cents in order to make the quarter amount 4.25 the most efficient way to do this is give back a dime and a nickel to have 38 coins used so far. Now we just use quarters to get a grand total of

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