Paper composition of 1961 Soviet Ruble notes?

Hello, I’ve recently acquired 20-40 of each denomination of the 1961/1991 USSR ruble notes. I was wondering if anyone knew if these would be safe to lightly clean/wash with water for safe handling in an immersive USSR-themed board game.

I understand this is a topic of controversy in the money collecting hobby but these notes are all thoroughly circulated and after much research on each note, I have not found any sort of rare variant among them.

Good afternoon,

It is always unsafe to do anything to banknotes that includes liquids or other cleaning methods, as you risk damaging them. For your purposes, I would suggest just leaving them as-is and simply having the players wash their hands after playing. As these are circulated, they probably have already come in contact with water, among other liquids, and it wouldn’t harm them too much to wash them gently, especially if you don’t care too much about preservation of the notes’ original state.

I’m also curious about the board game. Did you design it yourself or is it one that you purchased somewhere?

Daniel

Thank you, I'll take that into consideration. Beings that players will most likely be drinking/eating snacks during the game, I'll probably give them a gentle wash or offer a safer alternative.

We'll be playing Communopoly, originally created by No Rolls Barred on YouTube. It's a parody of original Monopoly but with ridiculous, USSR themed rules adjustments: https://youtu.be/jkN6xxyEgZc?feature=shared

Well now I’m going to have to play Communopoly! It looks like a really unique take on Monopoly and I think some of my family would love it.

I would recommend leaving the real banknotes for collectors and buying souvenir Soviet money for the game. Souvenir banknotes are cheap, safe and you don’t have to worry about anything happening to them.

You could scan, print and laminate the banknotes in question.