Today I read an article about counterfeit dollars. A rare fake: a one-dollar bill had the number 20 and the inscription "Twenty" pasted onto it, and the portrait of President Washington was preserved. The woman gave this bill to the bank, probably kept it for a long time.
Memories came flooding back. I had a similar experience 33 years ago, in 1992. The Soviet Union had collapsed, but Soviet money was still in circulation, rapidly depreciating, and people were trying to buy dollars to keep their salaries.
Our salaries were small, about 30 dollars a month, and many earned extra money by growing vegetables and berries in their gardens. I was 16 years old and I went on a night train to a big city with strawberries. My mother and I sold three baskets of strawberries and got about $100 in Soviet rubles. It was a large sum, and we were very happy then.
But our joy was short-lived. Our haste let us down, and we decided to buy dollars right away. I still don't like to rush.
Back then, street money changers had a good rate, not banks, and people exchanged currency on the street. That's what we did. I approached a money changer who had just sold dollars to a man and asked him to sell me 100 dollars. He had a wad of dollar bills in his hands, but he told me he didn't have $100. Now I know that for some reason he felt sorry for a 16-year-old schoolboy (it's amazing that even scammers had some principles back then). But then I didn't understand anything and told my mother that he didn't have any dollars.
We boarded the train and before departure another money changer started walking around the train. This money changer kindly agreed to change our Soviet rubles for two $50 bills. We looked at the denomination of the bills, at the inscription fifty, rubbed the president's jacket with our fingers and did not notice anything suspicious about these bills.
The train departed. After 15 minutes, a woman started walking around the carriage and saying that she had been sold counterfeit dollars. We took out our two bills and gasped. Instead of President Grant, Abraham Lincoln was smiling at us. It was a huge loss for us, $90 was 3 months of my mother's salary. How much work we put into these strawberries, how happy we were with the profit after selling them and here is the result.
We arrived in our small town. We peeled off the numbers 50 from the bills and took two 5 dollar bills to the bank for verification. The bills turned out to be genuine. I got one of them. That's how I earned my first 5 dollars in my life, at the age of 16. You must admit, it was an unusual way.
$5 is not as valuable now as it was in 1992. You can earn it for just one post on Hive. But back then, it was good money. But the most valuable thing I took away from this story is experience, the ability to wait and not rush into financial decisions.