Excerpt from The Rare Earth Series, Volume One: On the Job Training - Berlin to Vladivostok
By Spring of 1986, I had collected some 1000 old banknotes in my new hobby of frequenting the Polish jarmarks, gieldy, flea markets, and gieldy starych pieniedzy of Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, and Gdansk. Eighteen months of buying, selling and bartering brought my collection to a size that I began to wonder how I was going to get my little make believe treasure of Old Russian, Polish, German, and Ukrainian notes out of the country. These banknotes, old stock certificates, and bonds varied in size all the way up to 8" by 14" and were mostly in very good condition. These notes were dated from 1796 to 1944.
...Not seeing very many interesting or new potential notes that day I was starting to lose interest when suddenly a very old woman pulled my shoulder bag lightly and turned me toward her. She was quite well dressed and had a heavy looking antique sewing bag in her hand. She said she had something that I might be interested in and opened the bag up slowly, making sure that others were not peering over our shoulders or watching us too closely.
What was in her bag was, to me, absolutely exquisite. Several unopened packages of one ruble notes from 1898 in mint condition...including the the Russian style seals on the packages and the crisp red tissue paper that it had originally been packed in at the mint. Each little package had fifty one ruble notes and, not being exposed to the sun or to sweaty-dirty hands, were just like new with colors I had never seen in this common banknote in the flea markets in Poland. She wanted $10 per package and told me she would only sell me four packages. As we talked, she said she had noticed me all year long coming to the gielda spending money on junk and I hoped I would be pleased with her offer. I told her I was and appreciated that I had been given an exclusive chance to buy from her.
...In parting, I asked the woman how she had come across these banknotes in such good condition. She told me that she had worked in a bank and found them hidden away in a vault in a bin labelled "For Destruction". She took them in her purse and had held them in her attic for 30 years in Warsaw.
