With the introducing of the Finnish minting commemorative Olympics coins in 1952, nations that held Olympics in the past tried to create more and more coins. Ever since then, commemorative summer (& winter) olympics coins have kept the traditions of minting excessive coins. Of course, this is an occasion that has to be celebrated, even in the fields of numisatic

The first monster silver case minted was probably the 1972 Munich Olympics silver set, although it seems that the 1964 Innsbruck winter olympics had a monster set of silver medals. The following Olympics - the Canadian mints did similar issues and seemed to be quite successful... but...

In 1980, the Soviet Union had its first olympics, only to let politics to sadly ruin the whole coin mintage issues. As metal prices went to insane levels during that era, such coins had to be melted down.

It might be a sad story as there were various coins minted excessively, only to be found out not to be appericated internationally. It is only these recent years that hardcore collectors are making such coins a better place to be at, instead of metal refineries.

In total, during the whole mintage from 1977-1980, there are:

6 1ruble ni-cupro
14 5rubles silver
14 10rubles silver
6 100 rubles gold
5 150 rubles platinum,

which is almost an impossible feat to compete against except to be beaten possibly against Sydney's 2000 Olympics commemorative coin series.

All of them are available in both proof and uncirculated. Also there are some cases where some particular types of coins were minted in both LMD and MMD, which makes variety collecting a bit too expensive.

Nevertheless, a silver set like this 'fortunately' is not too expensive.



This set is supposed to be 5 different sets minted over 4 years, which is later combined to make this massive silver set.

I will try to break this thread down into the 5 sets and explain them in details...

Series I: Geographic

Scenes of Moscow:


Map of USSR:


Scenes of Leningrad:


Scenes of Tallin:


Scenes of Kiev:


Scenes of Minsk:


As the title of this series suggest, this is a series of the geographical locations in the USSR. They indeed to depict great monuments, but one wonders why so few cities - maybe this is a good reason why the Soviet Union broke down.

In 1982 and 1983, there seems to be trial versions which depicts Alamaty (Kazakhstan) and Taskent (Uzbekistan) but for some odd reasons they weren't approved...

Beautiful. I have a Canadian Olympic set. It's Unc vs. proof, but I really like it a lot.

Series II: Citius

In Latin, Citius means to go faster or probably "the need to go faster" Hence the motifs are depicted in this manner:

Cycling:


Canoeing:


Equestrian:


Running:


Swimming:

I love the coins, especially the bicycle design. WOW!

Series III: Altius

Altius in Latin is to go higher

Pole Vault


Basketball


Volleyball


High Jump (notice how the background is similar to the Series II running coin)


Grand Prix Jump

Series IV: Fortius

Fortius in Latin means to be stronger, like this emoicon

Judo


Boxing


Weight Lifting (Soviet style)


Hammer Throw


Weight Lifting