Spent Casing
| Exchange Rate to USD | 1.00 : ~US$1.50 |
| In use since | 1993 |
| Currency Code | SSC |
| Symbol | 
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The spent casing (SC, SSC, ASC or ) is the unit of currency of the Armed Republic of Soviet Bloc.
History
The spent casing itself, although very young in terms of currency, has an incredibly vivid early history dating to 1993 at the formation of what would become the Armed Republic of Soviet Bloc. Boris Chlevenkov, the then leader of the Armed Republic’s predecessor, the United States of the Soviet Bloc, found himself in a dilemma. The USSB had in its possession a vast tonnage of gold and silver seized from the former Armenian and Georgian governments, but the nation was not willing to trade or use the former nations’ currencies. The government at the time had no formal printing capabilities, no smelting or melting capabilities, and certainly couldn’t print or press currency while engaged in warfare with the Russian Republic. However, the nation needed a proper currency instead of the ad hoc bank notes used and Chlevenkov realized it.
The solution wouldn’t come for a matter of weeks as separate proposals were debated, some including variants of checks, ‘I-O-U’ papers, adopting the United States Dollar, etc. however there was still no formal minting locations in the nation and thus most of the proposals would require the expenditure of foreign investment [mainly the United States Dollar], most of which was readily required by the war effort. In June of 1993, a report concerning the recycling of brass casings was left on the President’s desk. The contents of the report included a warning that a vast number of casings were ill suited and not advised for meltdown and recycling due to impure production materials at their plants of origin. Melting them down and filtering out impurities would require man-hours and money, both of which were short in the country at the time, they were instead advised to be either refilled by hand, disposed of, or sold/given to civilians for their own purposes. The President after reading the report instead authorized the movement of the 7.62x39mm spent casings to the recently created Ministry of the Treasury where civilian laborers would stamp a serial code onto the brass’s exterior with seized commercial presses.
Thus, the spent casing was born. The government issued a certain number of spent casings, each one representing a certain value of gold and silver and the currency was quickly issued to the general public serving as a ‘note’. The currency’s initial use, however, was initially incredibly bumpy especially due to the fairly easy ability to counterfeit the money which was eventually solved using traced serial codes and a wire brushing machine which scraped a design into the non-stamped portion. The original name of the currency was the Dengiy but it never caught on and was replaced in the public, and government, with the ‘spent casing’ terminology. Soon enough, the spent casing was in wide circulation and highly popular, replacing the United States Dollar in government and private use.
Several complaints were noted, however, two of which were the spent casing’s size and its tendency to corrode. The former was solved by, after the war, stamping the spent casings flat and trimming portions of it off. The latter, however, was not readily solvable without replacing the entire spent casings form. Instead, the government opted, due to the relatively cheap nature of producing the spent casings, to replace them faster than what would be expected for proper coinage and paper money.
Eventually, however, after counterfeiting began to rise again and the production of actual spent casings became more expensive, the government opted to produce coinage and paper money, eventually resulting in the spent casing’s current form.
Denominations
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The spent casing comes in a number of denominations: 1 (One; Blue Hues), 5 (Five; Golden Yellow Hues), 10 (Ten; Green Hues), 20 (Twenty; Red Hues), 50 (Fifty; Silver Hues), and 100 (Orange Hues). Larger denominations (500 and 1000) are special print only with a silver metallic and brass color hues respectively.
Spent Casing Characteristics
The spent casing in its current form is printed on a very high durability, layered composite but retains its ability to be folded, crushed, etc. but able to resist major wear, tearing, and bleaching. An added bonus of the design is its inherent ability to defend against counterfeit due to its composite construction, layered design, and production process.
Besides coloring, each denomination also has several features. The front and back of each note is inscribed with a scene or image unique to the Armed Republic. No note best describes this than the one spent casing note. Its obverse side depicts the iconic photograph taken of hundreds of spent casings, only hundreds of thousands surrounding the parliamentary building. The photograph, taken the day after the storming of the capital during the beginning of the conflict, was run again in newspapers across the nation on July 1st, 1993, the official introduction date of the 'spent casing'. Its reverse contains an image of the parliamentary building in its current state. The one spent casing note, besides updates in designs, never changes its obverse and reverse images, partly due to the significance of the two images.
The remaining notes maintain images and scenes from across the Armed Republic all of which are inherently important to the Armed Republic people. These scenes and images are sometimes, but only temporarily, replaced with promotional images. One such instance was the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Armed Republic in 2002. The year's produced notes all contained images of historically significant places, battles, and people. A similar promotion ran to commemorate the nation's leaders in 2005.
