The era of 1830s fascinate me as it is the very era that platinum coinages and commemorative coins started to pop out, as well as the scarce Kolyvan commemorative gold ruble.

I have been fortunate enough to see them with my real eyes as dealers here did own 3 ruble gold and 3 ruble platinum coins, both circulated. However, never have I seen a platinum 6 and 12 rubles, which makes me wonder if inflation started to occur around that time. In fact, I don't quite remember seeing anywhere on the net of 6 and 12 ruble coins any lower than XF. Mustn't have been popular at all.

My question is, what was a ruble worth at that time? What could one get with a ruble at that time? And assuming if 12 rubles were legal tender, what could that have possibly bought.

Here is some info I found on a Russian site, it's a price index for 1711 to 1913. I added English translations, though I couldn't translate the difference between the two butter products etc. The units under each date are in Kopeks.

Товар/Item Unit 1711-14 1761-70 1801-10 1853 1913

Мукаржаная Flour Product кг/kg 156 237 489 644 763
Мукапшеничная Flour Product кг/kg 72 110 236 324 373
Крупагречневая Buck wheat? кг/kg 128 194 280 501 516
Говядина Beef кг/kg 122 107 157 152 135
Маслопостное Butter кг/kg 48 52 114 141 145
Маслокоровье Butter кг/kg 31 33 74 78 37
Молоко Milk литр/liter 490 185 - 217 182
Мед Honey кг/kg 62 27 81 99 144
Сахар Sugar кг/kg 7 10 18 41 129
Рыба Fish кг/kg 77 53 - 117 92
Яйца Eggs кг/kg 857 840 699 88
Водка Vodka литр/liter 33 22 100 76 70
Сапоги Boots пара/pair 9 5 13 11 17
Башмаки Shoes пара/pair 9 10 24 20 31
Полотнольняное Linen метр/m 61 55 116 176 101
Сукносермяжное Fabric метр/m 43 43 - 117 96

Here's the resources I used: http://www.expert.ru/printissues/northwest...6/36no-sobshs1/
and, http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/mironov.pdf

Very interesting!!! Thank you Norse man! Interesting to see how flour is very expensive in those days. Even beef is cheaper! Makes me wonder how much kartoshka (potatoes) cost back then. Of course vodka has always been at reasonable prices

Now that table doesn't quite make sense why 1/2 and 1/4 kopeks continued well Nicholai II era although I guess that was meant for really small change for 1/2 kilos, 1/4 kilos, etc of food.

As well as - welcome to coinpeople as well as the 3000th member!

"Мука ржаная" is rye flour.
"Мука пшеничная" is wheat flour.
"Масло постное" is vegetable oil (not sure what they made it from at that time, most likely from sunflower).
"Масло коровье" is butter (from cow's milk).

It seems that most grain products are surprisingly expensive when compared to animal products (with the exception of eggs which are really pricy, then are suddenly dramatically cheaper).






These prices suggest that the polushka must have been nearly worthless, maybe just useful for paying sales taxes (if there was such a tax).







Yes, welcome Norse_man, and thank you for such an excellent first post.

The fact that wheat based products, ie bread, flour etc were so expensive then has more to do with the means in which it was produced, for one, there was no mechanical way to harvest, separate from chaf, and then grinding into flour was very labour intensive. A barrel of flour out on the frontier in the mid west of the USA could cost $50 or more during the 1850's.

All this talk about bread, food etc reminds me of saying I learned in school:

хлеб и каша пиша наша!

And how true it is

And that was $50 in gold (about 2.5 ounces), roughly $1,650-$1,700 today.