In looking at the Russian mint web site there are a lot of commemoratives being issued. With places like Germany, Australia, the US, and Austria it seems to be targeting mostly a local population of collectors to help pad the state's coffers. Is that also true in Russia or are these coins tageted more towards foreign collectors?

I am going to strongly disagree on that. Honestly, Russian coins are a pain in the back just to obtain in reasonable prices and it seems that the Russians have no clear idea of what marketing is, or most probably 14 years right after the breakdown of the Communist idea is not long enough for a capitalist idea of marketing.

My belief is simply because, if you are to go to any world coin dealers, and if you asked them for Australian, Chinese, British, German coins, sure they got quite a fair bit of them stocked up. Russian? I don't think so. They might have some silver ballerina coins or some soviet coins but rarely are they stocked up.

You see, the real bitterness of marketing Russian, or rather Soviet coins overseas lies during the Soviet Olympics era in 1980. The Soviets minted insane amount of platinum, gold and silver coins for the first time ever since the Imperial Russian era. There were Olympics coin cases especially made in Canada in genuine leather for N. America distrobution, but if you remember right, silver and gold prices were and still ARE the highest record ever in history. Not only did the US boycott the Olympics, quite a fair bit of the world did - making the whole Soviet Olympics coins marketing a laughing stock. The same reason applied to the Chervonetz, which was also the equalvalent of a gold trade dollar.

From that point on, Soviet coins, or rather Russian coins were never really marketed overseas. At least with the Soviet mintage, you can roughly estimate how many 3 ruble coins (silver coins in this case) were minted, which can be from 25,000 to 40,000 per coin.

This format does not apply in modern Russian coins where you can have various mintage for one particular coin and very scarce amount for the other.

But I must agree at one stage, there are coins that target to foreigners, such as the ballerina set in all sorts of precious metals. Even at the Moscow International airport, Shermechevo, there is a bank called Sberbank which sells precious metal commemorative coins. Ironically, if you check the customs and laws, exporting ANY sorts of currencies, which include coins and banknotes IS ILLEGAL, which just makes the whole thing a complete joke. Why SELL coins at the airport when people are leaving?!?!?!!

Hope I did answer what you are looking for

Aside from strongly disagreeing with a question you answered my query completely

I haven't paid too much attention to Russian coins at shows but the web page doesn't seem to be a very apt marketing tool. I'll have to look at some Russian dealer tables net time, they seem to cluster around together near Markov.

You mean Dimitri Markov? Now that is a different story. Markov deals with the some of the rarest Russian coins, and he even dealt with the ultra scarce 1825 Konstantane ruble.

This is his homepage: http://www.russian-coins.net/

Trust me, if you think Russian coins aren't that marketable and hence must be pretty cheap, the price does come at a shock horror price.

If you would like to take a look at a seller who deals mainly with Russian coins - http://www.chervonets.com

It might give you an idea of how "cheap" Russian coins may be...

Yes Dmirti Markov. He comes to Chicago and the ANA shows. I don't browse much and he always seems busy discussing things in Russian with two to five other dealers (or maybe they are customers how would I know )?

Thanks for the link. Most world coins can be quite cheap, the problem is that one can easily get more coins than space that way

WOW, you actually do get to see Dimitri in real life???

Too bad I don't even live in the US... ahahaha

You might want to check the Russian dealers' catalogues - I wasn't too impressed with recent prices these few months

Regardless, if you are going to collect Russian coins, good luck