but instead, to look at the impact of Russian-related coinage on the rest of the world. The very first Russian coinage is generally agreed that was first minted in Ukraine, with the image of Byzantine and Christian motifs, as well as the baptism of Russia into Christianity in the same year.
Who would know than other than the ex-Soviet nations had Russian influence on their coinages. If you remember history right, Russia has been pushing her borders to the Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Indeed that is a very frightening sight as Russia managed to have unique coinages for Poland, Moldava / Romania, Finland, Georgia, Prussia by the end of 1917. Some of them lasted for very short period of time, indeed a matter of just a couple of years or so, but even so, to successfully manage to circulate designs made by her own countrymen was some amazing feat.
To add to the feat, when Imperial Russia fell and the Soviet government was placed, all of the ex-Soviet countries, whether they liked it or not, had to use their currencies.
Another few unusual coinages / patterns that aren't too directly linked to Russia would be this:
1) Spitzbergen - A northern terrority shared between Norway and Russia. Russia released "coins" back in 1946 and ever since 2000 (I think) released plenty of nonsense commemorative coins
2) Mongolia - When the Soviet government gave a hand in Mongolia back in 1934, Mongolians were forced to learn cyrillic. Or rather, thanks to the Soviet government, perhaps the illterate rate have decreased. But of course, the written education was given in cyrillic. (Mongol is NOT an easy language to master though!!!)
3) China (!!!) - Back in 1949 when China declared herself as Communist, there were prototypes of gold coins to feature both Lenin and Stalin. *shudder*
4) Korea (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) If you are to read my other post about the Korean coinage under the Japanese Protectrate era, it will give you another interesting aspect of what happened back in 1901-2.
Link Auction number 161-163. Those coins were actually a set of pattern coins.
5) (minor) Dual coinage of the 1902 37.5ruble-100franc coin. This too was a contriversal coin but was only meant for foreign payment, never intended to be used for local payment.
There might be more, but these are the ones that I know for the moment.
Imagine if such pattern coins became coins were minted for circulation... now that would mean that Russia would have single handly influenced at least 1/3 of the world, which is a good challenge against the Roman Empire coinages and perhaps only to be superseeded by the British mornachy which featured and still features on more than half of the world's coins. Population wise? Probably a good 25% of the world would have been Russian related if such pattern coins or history took a wrong turn.
Perhaps because of Russia's interesting history that I started to collect Russian coins - I wouldn't stop collecting any time soon I guess...
Can anyone confirm this? 
