I am still working with the pile of junk copper coins that I got last year and I STILL haven't got through them all even though it's supposedly 1.2 kilos or something. I sold off the spare Nikolai II copper coins that I had but there weren't much spares - interesting enough, there aren't that many duplicates in the first place. It makes me suspect if it was originally a collector's collection that was forgotten as it was buried or something similar and the whole copper collection got ruined. Nevertheless, there are the 1840-2 1 kopek coins and the mintmarks are just unreadable. With some detective work with varieties, I found some interesting things to comment on.

I've made a dangerous assumption in this case that all coins are of different mintmarks.

By the way, here are the thickness of them:



The third coin is a massive 11.6 grams opposed to coin next to it, which is just a mere 8.6grams. The technical weight is supposed to be at 10.24 grams but we know it's rarely close to there. It's usually weighted in kilograms or something.

The weights of the 7 coins that I'm going to present are as follows: (Of course, corrosion does have an impact on how heavy these coins should weight originally)

1: 9.5g
2: 9.7g
3: 11.6g
4: 8.2g
5: 10.2g
6: 10.0g
7: 10.6g

Nevertheless, here is for 1840. Special attention is paid upon the font characters of 1 копейка серебром

I've uploaded larger photos here: http://www.gxseries.com/numis/rus_imperial/1840_2/

Coin 1: SPM?


Coin 2: EM?


Coin 3: CM?


Out out the first three, it's easy to assume that coin 2 and 3 are of EM and CM origin as they only have two characters. I have trouble designating which one should go to which but it's interesting to note that in this particular year, the letter "O" overlap the letter "M"

The only reason why I judged the third coin as a coin from CM is due to it's crudeness as well as I suspect CM mint has a less severe weight control program. I find this year difficult to judge. Maybe someone has a better idea than I do.

Part 2 continues in the next post...

Part 2 as follows:

1841
Coin 4: SPM(?)


Coin 5: CM


Coin 6: EM(?)


1842
Coin 7: SPM


1841 1 kopek series seems to be quite interesting. Out of all of them, the most noticeable is the CM 1 kopek as it has a particular way of how the beak of the number one looks like - it looks like a "beak" instead of a flatten edge. The letter "й" in копейка seems to differ from EM and SPM as SPM has a tendency to have the mark a bit longer than what the EM does with "й".

1842 1 kopek wasn't that tough - the way the number "2" was engraved seemed to be very distinct through the three mints.

Just something to ramble through the weekend as I finished a few nightmare assignments

It maybe useful to look at the edge. CM coins were always struck out of collar. CPM I believe were always in collar, while EM went both ways. Also CM coins are often noticeably “lumpy” – the thickness of the cross section is irregular. Maybe this can help sort them out.

Where did you find them?

Good point Alex. Forgot about that totally.

This was actually part of an ultra corroded copper hoard that I bought and the seller DID declare that it's in one of the worst conditions ever. Silly enough, I had to bid but found some interesting coins such as a 1700 denga and the supposely 1795MM 1 kopek overstruck over 1788 1 kopek over 1762 1 kopek. It is still under investigation but I just never had the ability to take the photos in high resolution. Most of the recent corroded Russian coins that I have added to my omnicoin collection is from the hoard, with still about 60 ruined coins waiting to be identified. I'm still painstaking removing the cuds where possible.

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