The Ukrainian trainer Alexander Kupchinsky living in the USA collected a unique collection of icons about wrestling.

The collecting of icons — quite spreaded hobby, but the serious falerist who are specializing only on wrestling, isn't much. Alexander Kupchinsky — one of them. It is obliged by the hobby to a profession to which devoted all the life. Alexander works as the free-style wrestling coach, and before itself quitted on a carpet, representing at competitions the Ukrainian city of Chernovtsy, from where a kind. In 1999 it benefited the green card and got over across the ocean. It was justified in New York where works as the trainer at private university.

We got acquainted with the 60-year-old collector in the World Cup in Budapest. Nearly 40 years it collects icons, and today at it them about ten thousand were collected. The most part of a collection is made by icons of national federations of wrestling and let out to Olympic Games and the World Cups.

The Kupchinsky knows all large falerist who are specializing on wrestling. In the territory of the former USSR of those — three, two from them live in Ukraine, and one in Moscow. At last the biggest collection numbering more than 90 thousand icons. This digit strikes and surprises. It is difficult to provide that there are so many icons about wrestling, after all far not to all large wrestling competitions this type of souvenir products is issued. By the way, the competitions which are taking place in Hungary, in this plan can serve as an exception. Their organizers always care of that admirers of wrestling could acquire to themselves something on memory. Here and on it time in Sports palace there was an abundance of souvenir products with World Cup symbolics — charms, icons, hours magnets, soft toys, t-shirts, baseball caps and many other things.

Alexander took with himself to Budapest a small batch of the icons intended for an exchange. We don't know, whether it found colleagues on a hobby and whether exchanged something, but at least for three icons, let out to the World Cup, its unique collection becomes exact more.

Timur RASULOV

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