Paul's I ruble coin



A slight history of Paul I: Paul I is the son of Katherine II. He became the leader of Russia in 1796, and tried to stop the French Revolution hitting Russia. But as he treated his guards badly, he had a lot of other issues. Unfortunately he did not live very long, his guards murdered him in 1801, as they were too unhappy with his way of treating them and incompetences.

Paul I was an unbelievable tasteless person yet religious. His principle is too simple - to make things as simple as possible. But sadly, Paul I certainly has no taste for fine arts, as the coin designs reflected his religious views. On the obverse of the coin, it shows the Roman figure "I" is surrounded by the letter "П" for "Paul" and then by four crowns. It is then surrounded by the text "МОНЕТА ЦЕНА РУБЛЬ 1797" (till 1801) which just means, this coin is a face value of one ruble. On the reverse, shows an inscribed bible text, "НЕ НАМЪ, НЕ НАМЪ, А ИМЯМИ ТВОЕМУ" or read as “Nie nam, nie nam a imeni Tvoemu”, which is translated to “Not unto Us, Not unto Us, but in Thy Name”. This text is then surrounded by four floral designs. Note that this is one of the rare times that the double head eagle was not used in design. Also note that this coin series was one of the shortest living in the whole series of Imperial Russian coins. It only lasted from 1797-1801.



The reverse design is very striking similar to the Dutch gold ducat trading coin, in fact, the Russians were illegally minting such coins for trading purposes! This is the most clear evidence that Russia did copy the design from the Dutch.


Technical Details of this coin:

Size: ~39mm (due to the crude shape of the coin)
Type of metal: Silver
Purity: 83 1/3
Weight: ~20.73 grams
Rim: Inscribed text of "ВОСЕМЬДЕСЯТ ТРЕТЬЕЙ С ОДНОЙ ТРЕТЬЮ ПРОБЫ" ("OF EIGHTY THREE AND ONE THIRD STANDARD")

Paul's I silver rubles are not suprising hard to find, considering it's age. It is the half ruble and quarter ruble that proves to be very hard to find, including the silver kopeks. On the other hand, Paul's I copper coins are not too horribly hard to find. (unless you are into varieties...)

Hope you enjoyed it

Very nice coin and info. So the coin is silver. Is it toned in the pic or is it lighting - I would have guessed bronze/copper.

The similarity with the ducat is neat. I'd seen the ducat before but didn't put the relationship together until I got to the end of your post.

Oh, it's definately not bronze / copper. It's definately silver, I guess the scanner had a bit of gamma gay contrast in it.

The edge of this coin as follows:



This is an extrusive edge, as in the text is extruded off from the edge. I think this was used until 1805 or so, and then in 1807, intrusive text was introduced. I am guessing because silver planchets were almost perfected then, and also, to prevent people from chipping of silver bits...

P.S. Russian coins are definately interesting!!!

Didn't the russians start minting the dutch ducats in 1850's?
Correct me if i am wrong, but that's what i think

Well, Saint Petersburg has been minting it from 1768-1867 at a GRAND scale. That's quite evil. Hehehe. Appearently there are two different types with the Russian mintage.