Traditionally, most coinages minted during the early Imperial era, were minted in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, but with St. Petersburg dealing with most of the gold and platinum coinages, as well as the other minor coinages too. On the other hand, it seems that Moscow mint only minted silver coins only when St. Petersburg cannot handle excess production rate and was shut down in the late 1700s.

I am not too sure why, but probably the technology in St. Petersburg was vastly improved in the early 1800s, probably with the aid of new minting equipments from the UK. Remember that St. Petersburg was still the capital city of Russia at this time.

With that in mind, while Ekaterinburg severely lagged behind in her copper coinages and eventually letting St. Petersburg to handle all of the coinages, this soon spelt trouble for only allowing one mint to deal with the whole nation's coinage. As WWI sets in, and St. Petersburg's men were conscripted into WWI, this spelt enough trouble for future coinages.

The previous St. Petersburg mint was rumored to be damaged during the First World War, and there was no official coinages from 1918-1920. The capital city was then moved to Moscow under Lenin. Goznak mint, based in Moscow was then setup in 1919 to compensate the loss of St. Petersburg mint, but it was never in full use until 1942.

And that was the brief history of the two mints. However if we are to compare what both mints currently mint, it seems that Moscow mint handles most of the gold and more Ni-Cupro coinages, where St. Petersburg handles most of the palladium and platinum coinages. Both mints seem to share the job in minting silver coinages. I am not too sure why, but there might be an agreement on what mint strikes what particular type of coinages.

What is more interesting is the difference of finishes both mints deploy. If you are to take a look at the common bimetal 10 ruble coins produced by both mints, it seems that St. Petersburg has a more refined finished look whereas Moscow mint seems to be much cruder, possibly because Moscow mint does not have the same technology as St. Petersburg (but why??? ) Is Moscow mint lagging again behind St. Petersburg?

There were some interesting differences in the production of the ММД (Moscow) and СПБ (St. Petersburg) mints in the 18th century.

For example, for Ioann III, the polupoltinnik (quarter ruble) type, which is a great rarity, is known only from СПБ. GM cites 3 examples known him: one in the Hermitage collection, the others in the I.I.Tolstoi and A.N. Lenivov collections.

The Treasury decided to have the grivennik (10 kopeks) coins struck at Moscow rather than St. Petersburg.

The quality of the ММД coins during this time was not considered good enough and both sample coins and die engravers were sent from СПБ to ММД to try to correct these deficiencies.

When the Moscow coins were subsequently approved, the Ioann III grivennik was struck in fairly large quantities at the Moscow mint (although they are quite scarce today).

Under Elizabeth Petrovna, the rubles struck at СПБ had 5 distinct adopted portrait types: the narrow bust half length portrait of 1741 by an unknown engraver, the common 1741-54 portrait (probably the work of Ivan Levkin), the more appealing 1754-57 portrait by Benjamin Scott, the masterful 1757 Dassier type and finally the Timofei Ivanov type of 1757-61. (The 1758 portrait type by Samoila Yudin was a pattern not approved for circulation, thus not counted.)

What is odd is that Elizabeth's Moscow rubles continued using the old Levkin type after it was dropped at St. Petersburg. This seems to confirm Moscow's status as a secondary mint during that time.

Here is one picture that I took very briefly with my camera:



Above is the Moscow Mint, and below is the St. Petersburg mint. This picture was taken of two different bi-metal 10 ruble coins.

As you can see, St. Petersburg finish seem to be a lot finer than Moscow's mint. Moscow's mint seem to have a lot of the "being sweeped by sandpaper" effect, and hence showing parallel lines.

I believe this is a major difference by the two mints, and I have checked with at least 50 bi-metal coins and they don't seem to disprove in what I am believing at the moment.

The lines on the Moscow coin look like die polishing lines (tiny scratches on the die which appear as raised lines in the fields of the coin). The St. Petersburg coin looks like it is a higher quality product.

I assume both coins are uncirculated or nearly so.