Claim: Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that banks will buy old, rare and antique notes and coins, including door-to-door collection.
Verdict: False
On the record: PIB Fact Check, 31 August 2026 named Facebook page Kishan Kumar and called the clips fake, made with AI / deepfake. “प्रधानमंत्री द्वारा ऐसी कोई घोषणा नहीं की गई है।” RBI, 4 August 2021: the Bank does not buy or sell old banknotes and coins and has authorised no agent to collect a fee for that.
By Raushan Kumar, Founder & Editor. Method: Editorial Standards.
New Delhi — 1 September 2026. Last updated 1 September 2026.
The reel treats a steel tin of old coins as a lottery ticket. Modi’s face. A line about banks buying rare notes. Sometimes a clerk at the door with a printed ID. If that launch were in the gazette, every household stash would carry a government price list. There is no such list.
PIB’s 31 August post is the file for this week’s wave. Kishan Kumar, on Facebook, is the page it named. The bureau’s Hindi line is the whole verdict: fake video, deepfake, no announcement from the Prime Minister. The site it points readers to for real schemes is myscheme.gov.in. The forwarded clip is not on that list, and it is not on rbi.org.in either.
April, July, August — same mouth
This face has been reused all year. Navbharat Times and TV9 Hindi logged the 28 April version: antique notes and coins, banks as buyers. On 27 July the script narrowed to old ₹20 notes. On 29 July PIB India put the door-to-door line back in — staff collecting rare and antique issues house to house. On 4 August the same mouth endorsed a “government-authorised buyer” for an old-coin exhibition. Captions change. No Finance Ministry circular appears under any of those dates.
A private dealer can still offer you money for a scarce issue. That is a private sale. It does not travel with a Prime Minister’s voice-over and it does not ask for an OTP to “register” the tin. Once the clip lands, the next message is usually a form, a processing fee, or a man who wants your UPI pin to “credit the purchase.” That is the same harvest as the PM-KISAN Rakhi ₹4,000 clip: borrow a trusted face, invent a payout, take the bank detail.
What a branch is actually told to do
RBI’s Master Direction on the Facility for Exchange of Notes and Coins, dated 1 April 2026, is the live instruction to banks. Branches must issue good notes and coins, exchange soiled, mutilated and imperfect notes, and accept coins and notes for a transaction or an exchange. Face value. Across the counter. Coins of 50 paise, ₹1, ₹2, ₹5, ₹10 and ₹20 of various sizes and designs remain legal tender. Coins of 25 paise and below stopped being legal tender on 30 June 2011, under a 2010 gazette the same direction cites.
Section 8 of that direction allows door-step banking for supplying coins to bulk, KYC-compliant customers who need more than a bag for business. It is a distribution rule. It is not a licence for a stranger to empty your almirah of 1960s rupees at a “rare” premium.
On 4 August 2021 the Bank had already seen the antique-buyer pitch. Press release 2021-2022/634 said fraudsters were using the RBI name and logo and charging a commission or tax to “buy” old notes and coins. The clarification is still on the site: the Reserve Bank “does not deal in such matters and never seeks charges/ commissions of any sort.” It has not authorised any firm or person to collect that fee. The public FAQ on indiancurrency.rbi.org.in asks the question in one line — “Does RBI buy or sell old banknotes?” — and answers no.
Two real windows these clips steal
November 2016 is the first. The Prime Minister withdrew ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes as legal tender and told holders to deposit them in a bank or post office. That speech is on the PIB archive. Deposit at face value is not a collector’s auction, and it closed years ago.
The second is the ₹2,000 note. RBI began pulling that denomination from circulation on 19 May 2023 under the clean-note policy. A 9 June 2026 consolidation is the current instruction: the notes remain legal tender, but from 9 October 2023 the exchange or deposit window sits only at 19 Issue Offices, with India Post as a send-in route to those offices. Ahmedabad through Thiruvananthapuram are named. That is a specified-denomination return desk. It is not a standing offer to price every old coin in the house.
Annual-report figures published by the Bank put the original stock at about ₹3.56 lakh crore when the 2023 withdrawal was announced, and say most of that stock has already come back. The leftover is a logistics problem for people who still hold the note. It does not create a Modi-branded antique counter.
Swipe sideways on a phone. First row is the claim under review.
A torn note still goes to a branch, at face value. A ₹2,000 note still goes to an Issue Office or into a post-office packet addressed to one. A stranger who wants a fee to “buy” the rest of the tin is running the pitch RBI described in 2021. Read the 31 August PIB post and the 2021 caution before the door opens. The face is familiar. The purchase scheme is not on the Bank’s site.
Corrections: corrections@thefactsdesk.com. The change will be noted on this page.
