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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Wehwalt, post: 2208147, member: 33595&quot;]Here are some more Russian ones, all ones I got from souvenir stands outside various tourist attractions in Saint Petersburg.&nbsp; The reverse of the 1 Kopek piece says something like (I am told) &quot;From kopeks come rubles&quot; which I gather is their Ben Franklin like advice for thrift (forgive any mistranslation).&nbsp; You&#039;ll note the two &quot;high values&quot;, one with Putin on the reverse again. The &quot;meal&quot; or &quot;beer&quot; token, you flip for to decide how to spend your rubles. The Russians seem to like that sort of token, I also bought ones that said &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; and &quot;love&quot; or &quot;no love&quot; (all in Russian, though oddly in Western characters)</p><p><br /></p><p>The replica gold coin was one of two I bought (the other has Catherine the Great).&nbsp; There was no pretense that this was anything other than fake and I think the price was 150 rubles for each (about $3)</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t think these items are marketed much to Western tourists.&nbsp; I did two tours and spent some time on my own.&nbsp; The cruise terminal, which had a bunch of souvenir stands, had no medals and only a few sets of old USSR coins.&nbsp; One of the tourist shops where we were taken had some (in cards, honoring, say, Gagarin or Kalashnikov, I posted one to this thread a year ago), one did not.&nbsp; You really had to look at each individual souvenir stand outside the tourist attractions like the Spilled Blood or the Hermitage.&nbsp; I also saw some at kiosks that appeared to be for local people.</p><p><br /></p><p>There were, by the way, Putin T shirts, coffee mugs, busts, matryoshka dolls, and post cards, that I saw.&nbsp; Both tour guides were asked about politics on the bus ride back to the ship and expressed very strong support for Putin. (one was very nostalgic for Soviet days, and said so).&nbsp; The Crimea coins and medals were the only items I saw that mentioned that in particular.&nbsp; I saw what I wanted to see (I was there in 1986 and 2014), spent enjoyable time scrounging for items for my collection, and had no troubles.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]431040[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]431041[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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