The fact that this coin is in a slab like this says something all by itself (to me, at least):
Albertus rouble 1796 on eBay (overstruck on an Austrian thaler of 1790)
Bidding is currently at EUR 3610 with 3 days 5 hrs left.

Who knows. But actually I was fortunate enough to talk with Cameron who actually had the chance to slab that particular coin, or else it might have been another similar one - can't remember the slab number, but I believe ICG is not too bad in slabbing. Give me a break, didn't PCGS made a terrible mistake with the Borodin ruble with the Column ruble?

Who is Cameron?

Guys!

I do not trust ICG. I saw many "problem" coins slabbed by them recently. They have no idea what they are doing at all.
The Oldman.

According to our dear R.W.Julian, the comparison of many coins offered showed that only 2 pairs of dies were used, both could be easily distinguished - look JRNS #70. In fact what troubles here is (besides ICG with their bad fame of Russian fakes identification) - is Austrian thaler as a base coin. Should that be a novodel, one could think it had been an idea of an 18XX collector. Here is a business strike coin and I do not have any idea why on earth an Austrian coin would go into mint press.

The picture is bad, does not show anything.

I would not bet more than a 100 dollars for that coin.

BY THE WAY IT IS ONLY 2:30 HOURS LEFT FOR 2006 IN MOSCOW. HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

Timofei and all !

Happy New Year ! Let it be wealthy and healthy !

The Oldman
p.s. Agree 100% on the Albertus rouble. With ICG you can have almost anything slabbed !

Firstly, I don't think it's fair to bluntly accuse ICG being a terrible grader. Most of the Russian coins in their slabs that I have seen are from Catherine II and quite often novodel copper coins. I am not into this type but I don't remember seeing any counterfeits yet. (perhaps it's another good topic to discuss on when we see one?)

BKB - Cameron's details can be found at ICG's homepage: http://www.icgcoin.com/TheTeam/tabid/505/Default.aspx Young he may be but he is the owner of http://www.sampleslabs.com

Back to the topic - I do agree that the pictures are unfortunately too unclear to make good comparsion. Yet there is something I like to point out. From the time of Peter III 1762 to the end of Catherine II 1796 silver coins were minted in 72% fineness and mass of 24 grams. Yet during Pavel I's 1796-1797, more specifically the Albertus ruble itself, it was minted in 83 1/3% fineness and 29.25 grams. That is two completely different planchets.

Would it not have been possible that the mint took some samples and struck them as tests? I don't see how the mint can crank out different alloy and planchet differences within a short period of time, especially with the technology at that time.

I don't know if this coin is real or not. If it is a fake, it is better than most in that it is not something that screams "FAKE!" at you as soon as you look at it.

I don't know the people at ICG, have never submitted a coin to them or otherwise done business with them. I doubt that they have any special expert knowledge when it comes to Russian coins, but I think that is probably also true of the other slabbing companies. The question then is whether they use outside consultants and, if so, who those consultants are. Probably there are only a few people who are consultants for authenticity and it seems likely those expert consultants would work with more than one company.

The overstrike is interesting. I can't recall seeing an obvious overstrike such as this coin before, but that might not be very significant.

There were a lot of interesting and not clearly understood (by me) things happening with the coinage under Paul. Particularly interesting were the Albertus rouble of 1796 (this type), the more commonly seen "heavy" rouble and its fractions of 1797 as well as the pattern yefimki of the same year which give the value of the coin in Dutch stuivers on the edge.

Considering these unusual issues, it appears that that there might have been an effort to create a "trade rouble" equivalent in intrinsic value to the important silver trade coins of the era that would have circulated in the Baltic area. The Dutch coinage would obviously be a major influence given the importance of the Netherlands as a commercial and banking center in that time and the Austrian empire would also be an important influence.

The undertype is identified as an Austrian thaler of 1790 with weight given as 28.86 grams, which is reasonably close to the ~29.24 grams gross weight of the 1797 heavy rouble. I don't know the fineness of the Austrian coin, but it might be higher than the .868 standard of the 1797 rouble, and so account for the ~0.4 gram weight difference between the 2 coins.

In such a situation, the overstriking of the Austrian coin as a pattern Albertus rouble (as gx has suggested) does not seem so absurd.

Perhaps we should not be so quick to condemn the coin as false.

gx, don't forget that the 83 1/3 fineness is based on 96 parts, not 100 parts.

83.3/96 = 86.8%, or .868 fine silver.

Oh, my failure in realizing the fineness bit

It's an easy mistake to make.

Who would expect a fineness measurement based on 96 rather than 100?

I've seen this coin on Ebay (or someplace else). Can not recall right now. Maybe it will come back to me.