Hi everyone !

First of all, Merry Christmas , Happy New Year to everybody ! Have a safe and happy 2008 !

This coin looks genuine to me :

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...N:IT&ih=020


Any other opinions ?

Best regards from

Doesn't matter - still looks WOW to me.

Does "WOW" mean too expensive or too cheap ?

I believe this is a pretty scarce piece...

Any other opinion on this coin?

It's not a Rouble and not a pattern. It's a copper memorial medal.

It's a neat and infrequently seen item, which makes a super companion piece for the rouble.

Mixing related coins and medals can make for a more meaningful collection, even for those normally not attracted to medals.

I agree that it is a medal. This size (rouble size) was struck to be given to village elders (or something like that). Commemorative medals were often struck in different sizes to be given to receipients in order of importance by size (oh well). Regardless, the commemorative medals struck in rouble size and look were always popular amongst collectors and always brought good money. I think the one from Ebay has a nice premium potential.

Well...It is not , of course. However, if you check Russian and Western (Krause) resources you will find this piece listed as Pattern.
I have seen a few of them in Proof many years ago but not recently.

Best regards from

Size matters

No, it is a medal. If it was a pattern, then the denomination would have appeared.

RWJ

I should admit this is a very professional note. Thanks. I wonder what the buyer has to say on his new acquisition...?

The buyer will say that there is a ~2K profit to be made - that is if he wants to sell it.

Oldman, my wow is just that it's an awesome looking "coin" or medal although the final price is also high.

Julian, just to reconfirm my understandings of the Russian commemerative coins in the past - from what I have read, it seems that many Imperial Russian commemorative coins back in those days are modelled after genuine medals such as this one here:

http://www.kabinet-auktion.com/auction/warauction/63_79/

After that, a prototype for a commemorative coin was created and that was without denomination -

http://archive.sixbid.com/home/auctions/mm...15/01327h00.htm

And finally with denomination

http://archive.sixbid.com/home/auctions/mm...15/01326h00.htm

How exactly is the middle a medal when the sizes are made to be almost coin-like as well as the relief, font all resemble a coin type?

Just for fun, this is an interesting jeton that I found while I was searching for the images:

http://www.molotok.ru/item283841418_zheton...1898_g_new.html

My opinion is that the medals were made after the coins. In such cases the medals were made
as souvenirs to be sold or given away at the dedication of this or that monument, such as the
1898 one to Alexander II in the Kremlin.

The medals come in different sizes and the dies could easily have been made on a reducing machine
from the original coin models from which the denomination had been erased. That such medals exist
in the size of the coins would seem to indicate a collector demand for this particular size.

RWJ

Your wording suggests that this is not an established fact, but an inference made based on other known information.

I do not know enough about the origin of these medals to make an intelligent comment. My guess is that the medals were made at the Mint. If I am correct in that belief, then perhaps there are archival documents which would establish whether the coin is based on the medals, or the medals on the coin.

In the case of Dassier's portrait of Elizabeth Petrovna on the Moscow University medal of 1756, the sequence is known and it is clear that the 1757 rouble portrait was based on the 1756 medal rather than the other way around.

The Alexander II medal is particularly pleasing due to the (expected) higher relief of the medal design relative to the coin and is therefore more esthetically pleasing than the coin itself.

You are correct that the above is an opinion. However, the Dassier example is not relevant because
of the way dies were made in 1757 and 1898. The 1756 University medal, as you state, was the inspiration
for the 1757 rouble but in this case a new bust hub had to be cut by hand.

In 1898 the Imperial Mint used a reducing machine to cut hubs and dies. Under this type of die production
it was very easy to produce medal dies after those for coins had been made. It would also have been relatively
easy to erase the denomination from a master hub to create working dies for the medals which were the same
size as the coins. For medals of differing sizes the original galvanos would have used with the denomination
removed. (A galvano is a copper shell which duplicates the original clay artwork prepared for the coin dies.) It
is possible that in 1898 the reducing machine used at St. Petersburg did not create a full die but rather partial
hubs but if so this would have delayed medal dies by only a few days.

I would agree that the medals in question were struck at the Mint as the dies clearly were made from the original
models.

RWJ

Hi All,

I have finally received the coin/medal/jeton/award/whatever-it-is . Very nice Proof with some minor wear on high points. Thanks everyone for a very interesting discussion.

Best regards,

This theory implies that each time only one model was made (for medals and coins) and it at least not always true.

WCO

I did not say that only one model was used. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. However, the depth of the design
could be varied in the reducing machine so what appears to be different may not be.

RWJ