The penny gets a bad rap. People say the little copper coin is worthless, a drag on the economy, and a waste of time and effort. Admittedly, the penny is pretty worthless, but there are far more worthless coins in the world. The Russian kopeck is a great example.
At current exchange rates, the kopeck is worth .02 cents, which is pretty much nothing. Russia stopped making 1-kopeck and 5-kopeck coins a few years ago, but they still make 10- and 50-kopeck coins. Prices at stores are rounded off to the nearest 10 kopecks, and so you can build up a pretty good collection of worthless coins pretty quickly.
This leads to the kopeck economy. No one wants kopecks, so everyone tries to unload them whenever possible. The most obvious target is the bus conductor, and I usually make at least one of my 16 rubles for the bus fare out of kopecks. But bus conductors grumble a lot when you give them a big handful of kopecks, and, although they technically have to take them, sometimes they refuse. So the big kopeck shuffle continues.
At current exchange rates, the kopeck is worth .02 cents, which is pretty much nothing. Russia stopped making 1-kopeck and 5-kopeck coins a few years ago, but they still make 10- and 50-kopeck coins. Prices at stores are rounded off to the nearest 10 kopecks, and so you can build up a pretty good collection of worthless coins pretty quickly.
This leads to the kopeck economy. No one wants kopecks, so everyone tries to unload them whenever possible. The most obvious target is the bus conductor, and I usually make at least one of my 16 rubles for the bus fare out of kopecks. But bus conductors grumble a lot when you give them a big handful of kopecks, and, although they technically have to take them, sometimes they refuse. So the big kopeck shuffle continues.
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