Transnistria Plastic Kopeks

The other day, FFIVN asked if there were any countries that had plastic coins. We jumped on the google machine and found that there is indeed a "country" that uses plastic coins. That "country" is the breakaway territory of Transnistria in Moldova. It certainly has an interesting history that I won't get into, but you can read about here on the wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria

Anyways, I hopped on ebay and found these plastic coins and ordered a set. They arrived today and are pretty interesting. They are colorful, lightweight, and have interesting shapes. They feel almost like a guitar pick in hand.

Without further ado here they are:

2014 Transnistria 1 Kopek




2014 Transnistria 3 Kopeks



2014 Transnistria 5 Kopeks




2014 Transnistria 10 Kopeks





Feel free to post anything that you think fits Thanks for looking!

 

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Those are very unusual, to say the least @furryfrog02. Here's a banknote of mine from Moldova proper.

 

I bought a set of these about 2 years ago. I really like them!

 

Do you have a link to the listing @furryfrog02? I’m assuming it’s a BIN listing.

 

Here is the one I got! https://www.ebay.com/itm/Transnistr...063314?hash=item4670603292:g:4IYAAOSwovNaD1gS

 

Looks like shipping went up since I purchased

 

@furryfrog02, this is a most thought-provoking and intriguing post. Transnistria is quite a curious place. Although not recognized by almost all of the rest of the world, they choose to act as if they are an independent nation -- as represented by their money in the post above. As another example, when I visited there about three years ago, I needed to stand in a long line to go through passport control.

Yes, these plastic rubles (note that the coins shown above are all rubles and not kopeks -- but kopeks do circulate) are quite prevalent. Also circulating are aluminum coins which still have the old Soviet hammer and sickle. Supposedly Moldovia has the only current "Stalinist" government in the world.

 

Yup @Evan Saltis is right. Those are the ones I bought. I figured for $2 a coin (after shipping) it wasn't terrible. They are an interesting piece to add to the collection.

 

I was really intrigued to see how seriously they take their Soviet identity!

 

Interesting, but I’m no fan of $5 shipping.

 

Oh man, I could've sworn they were kopeks. I saw the bills as well and assumed those were the rubles.
Thanks for the extra information!
I saw that they issue their own passports as well. Must be odd since the rest of the world doesn't recognize them.

 

Yeah. It was steep. To be fair though, they did come packaged really nicely and securely lol. Better than I've received some pricier coins.

 

рубль - ruble
копейка - kopek ( there are a few other spellings because of the language reforms)

 

I wanted to learn Russian so badly but was only given the option of Arabic or Korean. I went for Korean. I'm too pasty to spend that much time in the desert.
Maybe someday I will have the time to learn Russian.

 

These are on my bucket list to acquire as I find them curiously interesting. I've wanted a graded set (yes NGC does grade them) but have been waiting to see if one goes cheaply enough at auction (I saw individual pieces from a seller abroad at ~$35 shipped each but am holding out for even less per coin).

 

Those are denominated in rubles, not kopeks. I can read some Cyrillic characters since they are similar to Greek.

 

Again, on my bucket list of languages to learn

 

These are my plastic 'coins' I bought a couple of years ago for the curiosity!
we may see it as silly at people using plastic for coinage, but it's no different from paper/polymer fiat banknotes that the world is currently running on!

 

Even just the Cyrillic alphabet is helpful. That way you can transliterate and pronounce Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, and plenty more. Plus, it's a good fouree into Greek imo.

Duolingo has russian, why not try? easy way to start.
Apple app store has some cyrillic alphabet learning apps too.

Learning Cyrillic and specific words in Russian has helped me immensely, but I also actually have a use for it considering I chat with Slavs a bunch.

 

I work with a lot of Russian linguists and I've learned a few words here and there. Reading is tougher for me since I have a hard time focusing.
I might check out duolingo. I had their Korean stuff but it was too basic for me. I guess that wouldn't be the case with Russian