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Pennies Are Trash Now | The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies.
(www.theatlantic.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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Reminds me how I visited relatives in Russia and they were just throwing their change away. Literally in the garbage. There was barely a place that would take them anyway so why keep it. It still feels very weird to toss money like that, even if it is not even a cent.
Weird. Do they not have the equivalent of CoinStar there? It's a nice occasional boost when the coin jar gets full.
It is weird, and I don't know if they had something like that. My guess is that getting small change in the first place was rare and it was not worth bothering for most.
Just for context, I am talking about копейки (kopek). Around 2003, the ruble was actually rather strong, with up to 23₽ to 1$. So 23 kopek would be 1 cent.
The last time I was there was in 2019 (for two obvious reasons). Back then the exchange rate was shit, with about 60-80₽ to 1$. The thing was that few places even gave you change in coin form. I remember relatives telling me that pharmacies are basically the only place that had prices with kopeks. The way it would work when shopping - apart from the fact that 99% paid with their phones and not with cash, I was the exception since I didn't have a Russian bank account and couldn't get one with my Russian passport - was that they would round prices, usually in your favor. So if you owe 2763 rubles (or 2762.88), and you gave them 3000, they would return either 240 or even 250, depending on how much change they have. They would also get majorly annoyed if you didn't have "760" on you since they usually didn't have change. I rarely got change back to the ruble (in this example 237). I definitely never got kopeks in a supermarket and just couldn't use them there.
So maybe accumulating change would take long time?
Please note that I am not a local, so my knowledge of Russian money culture and habits aren't the best or most reliable source. It's my experience but there are surely more qualified people around here to chime in.
Where I live, In Europe, these machines take a 10% commission.
When I have a sizeable amount of coins, I take bags to my local big box store, and use the self checkout. Some registers take cash. I just dump a handful, and top up with bills.
Ah, I really like that idea.
We did ours recently, found 2 large containers of coins my wife and I had. Cashed in almost $100 in change we didn't expect. Was nice.