My father visited the USSR in the late 80s. When he left, he was required by law to return all of the Soviet money he had exchanged. He offered all of his rubles and then he emptied his pockets and he had a handful of kopeks in them and put them on the desk. The customs guy looked down at them and said, “you keep kopek.” And that’s how I got a few Soviet kopeks as a kid to add to my coin collection.
Some of these rules are just silly and arbitrary. Once I was driving down to the USA from Canada and I had a banana sitting on the dash for a snack.
The customs agent angrily tells me “You can’t bring a banana into America”. So I chomped down the banana, and offered the peel for disposal.
“I don’t want the peel, you can keep the peel”
I looked confused and asked how the peel was any different from the whole banana, and he’s just like “move along, next vehicle”
I think he was just hungry and wanted to swipe my banana
My father visited the USSR in the late 80s. When he left, he was required by law to return all of the Soviet money he had exchanged. He offered all of his rubles and then he emptied his pockets and he had a handful of kopeks in them and put them on the desk. The customs guy looked down at them and said, “you keep kopek.” And that’s how I got a few Soviet kopeks as a kid to add to my coin collection.