“When I tell people about my hobby, they often take me for a sick person.
And that's true ".
At 64, Philippe, a young retiree in Arras (Pas-de-Calais), has only one obsession: tracking down euro banknotes.
Since 2007, this former employee in an electricity company has been recording the numbers of banknotes that pass through his hands, on a website, EuroBilltracker.com, which has more than 200,000 users across Europe.
The goal of the game: to know where the ticket comes from (if it has already been encoded in the past) and where it will continue its journey in the future.
"To register them, we indicate their value and the two sets of unique numbers that appear on them," explains our expert tracker.
Once the banknote data has been encoded in the machine, it must be quickly put back into circulation.
Because the ultimate quest of tracking is to succeed in making a “hit”.
“It's when a ticket is found by another EuroBilltracker,” says Philippe, who has more than 1,000 hits to his credit.
On the world map displayed on the site, you can follow the route of each registered ticket.
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His best move?
Having managed to get their hands, randomly from their purchases, on a 100 euro note, recorded 12 years ago by an Italian tracker.
“When I saw that, I almost fell off my chair.
It may seem completely futile, useless, because we don't earn anything, but for me it's happiness, "smiles Philippe, who does not hesitate to organize trips to countries where the community of trackers is the most active. , Belgium, Italy, Germany, Portugal… Just to circulate banknotes.
In 16 years of tracking, the sexagenarian even had to learn to optimize his strategy to obtain a maximum of tickets and therefore hits.
“I am not a cresus.
The tickets I save just go through my pocket.
But I manage to multiply them in exchange for currencies with merchants.
Sometimes I manage to convince them to exchange me a 50 euro note for several 5 or 10. And what I don't spend goes back to my bank account,” he concludes.
Watch our report at the top of the article.
