Yuri Babin, a retired military officer from the Russian city of Novosibirsk, has spent the last 13 year collecting a fortune of about 5 million kopek coins.
The kopek is 1/100th of a Ruble, the Russian equivalent of a cent. Babin began collecting them in 1998, following wide scale Russian bank defaults that caused the kopek to become practically worthless. Instead of trying to get rid of them, this Russian version of Mr. Scrooge decided to put together a huge collection of coins. He would pick them off the street and ask vendors to change his currency in coins of the lowest denomination.
The “kopek millionaire”, as locals know Yuri Babin, now has a fortune of around five million coins, which weighs over 7.5 tonnes, but is worth just 50,000 rubles ($1,500). But it was never about the value for Mr. Babin, he just loves bathing in his impressive fortune, and has even used a few kopeks to make his wardrobe shine.
