Nearly 600 Tons of Kroon Coins Still at Large
Despite last year's campaign to pull the nation's 1,000 tons of kroon coins from circulation before the January 1 euro changeover, more than half of them are still out there somewhere, according to the Estonian Banking Association.
With untold numbers of coins stuck in sofas or jammed in desk drawers, few people are now bothering to bring them in, and the flow of these coins into banks has now dwindled to a trickle.
At this point, nobody is expecting the remainder to be returned, Enn Riisalu, an adviser to the association, told uudised.err.ee.
"Of course a lot of people wanted to keep some cents, a lot of cents are simply lost and a lot of them left the country in the pockets of foreigners," he said.
Last October his organization began a campaign to encourage people to bring their 10.6 million euros worth of coins to their banks in an effort to withdraw the cash from circulation.
"We received nearly 400 tons. Since the nominal value of Estonian coins is relatively small, we set a goal to get at least half of them. We didn't get half, but we can say that we almost completed this task," said Riisalu.
Steve Roman