Chinese petrol station worker buys 680,000-yuan car … with a massive stash of coins
A petrol station employee in northeastern China surprised a car dealership recently when he bought an SUV with 660,000 yuan worth of coins, state media reported.
The man, who only gave his surname as Gan, called a salesman at a car dealership in Shenyang on Monday in Liaoning province, saying he wanted to buy a Toyota SUV in cash.
But Gan added: “My 660,000 yuan [HK$835,000] are all in one-yuan coins and I have another 20,000 yuan in one yuan banknotes.”
Gan said many clients at his petrol station were the city’s bus drivers, who pay in one-yuan coins when they come to refuel their vehicles.
“The fare [that] bus companies collected are all one-yuan coins and they used that money to pay us,” Gan told the Peninsula Morning News, a state-run newspaper in the province.
The bus fare in Shenyang city, the capital of Liaoning province, costs one yuan.
Gan said they earmarked that money when they wanted to purchase a car for the gas station.
The car dealership sealed the deal, with Gan’s coins as payment, but banks in the city refused to handle the cash due to the sheer volume of coinage.
One bank who initially agreed to have the coins deposited later declined to do so, saying they could not count all the coins in one day and that they had no space to keep the money.
The coins are now kept in makeshift storehouse.
