BBC: Russian explorers find 'swamp' of Soviet money
From the BBC website an interesting article on the discovery of vast amounts of old Russian banknotes.
"A group of explorers in Russia have found around a billion roubles in old Soviet money at an abandoned mine, but it's all completely worthless.
The group from Saint Petersburg, who publish a blog on abandoned sites across Russia, came across the money after following rumours that large quantities of cash had been dumped in old missile silos near Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Komsomolskaya Pravda news website reports. After travelling for several hours across rough terrain in Russia's Vladimir region, they found the mine literally overflowing with cash.
The site contains an estimated one billion roubles ($18m; £13.5m at current exchange rates, or $33.3m at the "official" Soviet rate in 1991) in Soviet Union banknotes of various denominations issued between 1961 and 1991, all no longer legal tender in the Russian Federation. The mine had been flooded in recent years, leaving what was essentially a swamp of banknotes bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin, the explorers' YouTube channel shows."
What a find! You can read the rest of the article here. The video of this discovery can be viewed below.
Hello Steven!
The guy in the video says nonsense!
When the USSR collapsed, he was about five years old, and he does not remember the money that was there.
I will take some photos from my collection especially for you.
The banknotes that he shows on the video all or almost all of the sample of 1991 and 1992. The USSR collapsed in 1991, and the money went until 1993 in all republics of the former USSR.
For 30 years, the missile mine flooded with water. Banknotes really pop up.
Sorry for my English.