Hi everybody,

I would like to share with you the coin I bought recently on eBay :

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...em=230016494810

This is a very rare coin - 2 kopeks 1797 AM with narrow cipher. Uzdenikov lists it as very rare ('-), Bitkin as R2, and so on.
Very interesting is that the line below the word "kopeks" is missing. I looked at this coin closely, it seems that the line has never been there, and not just became invisible due to surface corrosion.
I looked in all the books (I have almost everything, including "Corpus of Russian coins"), but this variety is not described anywhere.
The coin is genuine, I have no doubts on this point. The edge is intact, cord-like, as it should be.

Greetings,

kisenish

Great find! Maybe it is an unknown die?

Excellent find, kisenish!

Is it possible, being that the listed variety is so rare, that both types (i.e. with and without the separator over the date) were actually trial or pattern coins? This may have been the method of easily distinguishing the different patterns from another. Your coin was maybe an earlier version, as it would have been very easy to punch the line into the die afterwards.

Congratulations on a most interesting purchase!

I have never seen or heard of this "lineless" variety before. It must be an extremely rare coin to have escaped attention for all these years.

I know of 17 other narrow ciphers from my image database (this would be number 18) and know of 4 distinct die varieties. If this is indeed without a line (but I cant tell for sure without closer inspection) it would be die variety #5. Anyway, nice find and thanks for showing it.

Steve

What kind of database do you use to organize all of your images? I am curious because I have started to create a database of my own -- not just of images, but also with other information, transaction data, etc.

Hi Bob, if you drop me an email I'll send a summary document (pdf) I recently presented at a numismatic society meeting in New York about this ongoing project. (please use smoulding(at)earthlink.net)

Steve

Kisenish...can you post better images? The eBay ones are not too good.
Thanks in advance.
Steve

Yes, please post better images.

Also what makes to believe that it is an authentic piece?

Good question.

Supposely if the line is there, would there have been any similar varities to it Steve?

Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for your comments! I will post better images hopefully tomorrow (I just moved to Cologne, everything, including my scanner, is still packed and no Internet at home

Pictures from eBay are really bad . I even asked the person who sold it whether the coin was genuine, as pictures were not sharp. After getting the coin, I inspected it thoroughly, there is no doubt - it is a genuine coin with surface corrosion and porosity on the revers and strong oxidation on the avers. This is exactly what happens to the coin if it has been for example on a creek ground for a long time - exposed to water mostly with one side, therefore, the revers is worse preserved than the avers.

I'll put better pictures. Edge is completely ok.

Greetings,

kisenish

That's what was expected. Not even a doubt... I'll post another coin from Paul era to explain something as soon as I make images of it.

Hi WCO,

Do you think it's a fake? Actually, I have several other coins with the same type of damage, they are definitely genuine

Excellent question. I'll be able to make a better determination of die type with better images. Overall, the coin looks OK from what I can see so far but will await better pictures from kisenish.

Just made this picture. May be someone can explain what it is?

Obverse is OK, edge is OK as supposed to be, just "interesting" reverse. Note porosity and corrosion the same as on the other rare coin. Looks awfully similar, isn't it?

My guess is that it is a 1798 kopek with the mintmark removed.

But I don't see any tooling marks where the mintmark should be.

WCO...I'd say EM with the mintmark removed. Again very hard to say without seeing it. If you have a hi-res version of this scan please send to Steve.Moulding(at)gmail.com

Thanks

Steve

Yes, this 1 kopek coin from 1798 is a bit strange - surface is corroded, but letters are sharp Real corrosion would destroy the coin more evenly, like the coin I posted.
The next question is - where is the mintmark? Well, there are some novodels without it, but it does not look like a novodel. Interestingly, porosity is less on the place where a mintmark should be, possibly indicating a deliberate mechanical removal of the mintmark. Some people do it trying to establish "new", undescribed pieces and then to confuse the collectors.
I´ll look on my coin again. Even if the line was removed, the narrow cipher is still real

Hi Steve,

I agree, it should have been the EM mintmark.

Alexey

What seems to be interesting is a few parallel lines that are right under the year which I am assuming it is just polished off the coin. It might be cleaned and covered up the doings.

There was no tooling detected even under 40-x microscope. And still it's an altered coin. The pictures are the best I can do with my old camera. Modern faking "technologies" allow to make wonders with copper coins, dissolve surfaces, get coins toned again and look old and corroded, make line separators to disappear... narrow ciphers, AM mintmarks on place of EM all sorts of things. The only "problem" for the fake makers is that the surfaces of such coins look porous.

I think that kisenish purchased this kind of "work" (would be more than glad if I am mistaken). Of course the pictures of that coin were off focus and difficult to determine, so there is a chance I am mistaken. But something tells me that seller posted bad pictures for a reason, the price was $12 (and not hundreds as anyone would expect from coin this rare) for a reason too.

I found a little crack around the "O". Interestingly enough, the crack seems to go beneath the letter instead of through it. There is also discoloration behind ALL of the letters in "KOPEIKA" which looks to me like the letters might have been welded onto the coin one-by-one.

I looked at my coin now. I see there is a flan defect near letter "O" it goes through the letter too, just not visible on the pictures. Discoloration area is remaining red luster as often found in protected areas. The coin is definetely made from genuine piece, edge is too good. There are many of this kind (altered) on the market now.

Another sample of the "masterwork". Added undercoin (rider). This was for sale at Russian web site.

Obviously, there are too many highly-talented Russian metallurgists out of work.

Right, Russia was always reach with talented people.

Adding a rider is more difficult than to make a narrow chipher. But seeing a good picture of the coin in question would be still interesting for everyone (I guess).

Looks like original 1798 EM 1 kopeck -mintmark removed

Hi guys,

I scanned the coin. But unfortunately i can´t upload the pictures It says: "The total filespace required to upload all the attached files is greater than your per post or global limit. Please reduce the number of attachments or the size of the attachments", but my files are just 101 kb each

Can somebody help me?

Kisenish, you can sign up an account at http://www.imageshack.us which gives you unlimited space upload except the image restriction is less than 1.5mb (which I don't think your file is THAT big)

Alternatively if you still have issues, please do pm me and I'll give you my email address

Voila!
Thanks, gxseries!

Certainly looks realistic to me. Could you also post an image of the edge, pleaase?

Hi Bob,

I´ll post it tomorrow, since I´m at work and coin is at home now Part of the edge you can see on the first picture (with cipher) on the right side.

Perhaps I am imagining things but that's what I see.

Thanks kisenish for posting these so quickly.

From what I can tell so far it looks fine to me, at least in terms of being a narrow Cipher. As to die type and whether the line has been removed (and it may have been), I need to do some more work tonight.

Steve

Kisenish, thank you for the images!

Looks realistic, right. All the fakes made by altering a real authentic coin look realistic too. Should be letter "M" of mintmark this far to the right? May be this coin is real after all, do not know, just line separator removed? Interesting to compare to the other known coins of this type.

Mintmark is fine.
Compare to the Brekke Plate Coin:
[attachmentid=1717]

Steve

WCO:

1. The coin is fine. The mintmark is fine. I am a proud owner of 2 major variations of this coin. When compared to my coins, it checks out OK. It also checks out ok in comparison to printed image.

2. I do not see any reason for removing the line. 1798 no m/m exists. It is extremely rare. The coin at issue does not exist without a line. It could be a new die variation. Steve told said that he knows 4 die variations already. Of these 4 oly 1 is reported. It could have possibly been a soft strike, which caused the line absence. There are many things that could have caused this, in addition to this being an altered or a fake coin.

3. I do not believe that it is appropriate to trash someone else's coin before you have evidence. Now, how can you have such evidence in this case without handling the coin and making a first hand determination that it is fake/altered/etc. The images look fine to me. Corrosion is natural to this coin. I have no record of any such coin in mint state condition selling at auction.

The fact that the coin is not certified by NGC does not automatically make it a fake, you know...

2:BKB

Even with better images I do not know for sure if the narrow cipher coin is authentic or not, altered or not, new die variety or not. On your place, I would not be giving out your left hand that it is authentic and never altered for sure and with 100% accuracy. I saw too many examples to otherwise. On my side I did not put a 100% accurate verdict, on the contrary, I many times said that I may be mistaken and would be more than glad if this turns out to be authentic. I do not know why you decided that I tried "to trash someone else's coin" since I never did such a thing.

I've checked the obverse (monogram) against the 17 coins and 4 die types I know. It's different.

The reverse matches known reverses except we are missing some features, notably the line and what should look like a semi-colon after the 2.

Given the amount of wear on the center of the reverse (note the top of the 1 is missing and the central letters are very weak) I don't think we can yet say for sure that this coin really was missing these features when struck. I think it very possible they're just worn or corroded away. However, I can't see any traces with initial image enhancement techniques.

I do believe based on what I can see that the coin is genuine. I think it is a new obverse die type.

Of the coins I know of, this would now give

Obv Die Type I - 7 coins
Obv Die Type II - 8 coins
Obv Die Type III - 1 coin
Obv Die Type IV - 1 coin
Obv Die Type V - 1 coin (this one)

So, congratulations kisenish...great find

The obvious question is why are there so many die varieties?

Steve

Dear community,

Thanks a lot for the great discussion! It is a really amazing forum. In my collection I have several undescribed varieties and overdates of other coins (for example, 5 kopeks 1791/90/89 EM in good XF), when I have time I will post them

kisenish

Maybe because the dies were hand-made and the simple design of nothing more than the monogram b/w denomination/date/mintmark led to more obvious variations?

Paul's silver certainly shows a lot of variation ranging from pattern yefimki to the Albertus rouble and heavy rouble and its diminutives of 1797, followed by the lighter weight issues of 1798 and later years.

A charitible view might see this as evidence of much innovation and experimentation. A less charitible view might see it as evidence of an arbitrary and erratic approach to the coinage.

Certainly there were some interesting things happening with the coinage under Paul, even if the reasons for the changes are not always clear.

Kisenish, you most certainly to have something unusual there. However, I personally am skeptical over what you have there. What I did was to expose the color contrast:

What I am personally worried is the unusual wearing in particular on the left side of where the line is supposed to be:



Given in theory of where the line is supposed to be, it should be somewhere starting from the bottom of "o" to the letter "k". Now, WHY is the contrast in that particular unusually lighter? As well as, if you are to notice the lower letters of "O||EKI/I", it seems to me that there is some sort of unusual wear to them. The digit of "1797", in particular the first digit "1" also shows some unusual signs.

Well, Obverse is different. Reverse is different too from everything we know. Still conclusion that it is authentic and new variety.

I myself do not know what it is. In any case I would not rush and put this into catalogs. Congratulations kisenish! Great subject for discussion!

Hi gxseries,

Thanks for your comment!

It may be possible that the line just corroded away, difficult to say now Maybe, it was deleted by purpose, however, what for?? Or it´s just a weak struck. This coin in the hand looks much more convincing than on the scans, so I believe it´s genuine. Even if the line was there before, it is a variant with narrow cipher, the type I´ve been searching for a long time (actually, I saw several coins, but the prices were ridiculous , as those coins are rare)