Looks suspicious:

L I N K

Tricky isn't it? I personally avoid collecting such gold coins. If I would want to buy one, I would rather buy one from an auction house.

I personally cannot find faults with that gold coin at the moment...

Winning bid: EUR 2,410.00 (Approximately US $3,048.17)

I don't know if it's real or not, but the bidders seem to think it is.

Prices are amazing these days.

Here's another 1720 2R for comparison. I don't like the portrait.

Here's a much more attractive 1721.

In the meantime, I have had some feedback from RW Julian about this coin. He believes it is probably genuine, and he sent me scans of a similar coin which was sold in the auction of Giessener Münzhandlung (106). I have copied these scans to my server for you to see:

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/coinsareforever...s/1720gm109.jpg

The scans are from B&W printed matter and aren't very pretty, but you can at least see much of the detail.

Julian is probably right, but I think you are wise to question coins, especially scarce to rare Russian coins offered on ebay. There are many fakes offered there or coins offered for sale that the "seller" does not own.

I think you can often safely say that a coin is false just by looking at a picture, particularly if it is not well-made. Saying a coin is genuine based only on a picture is far more dangerous.

I agree with the "probably genuine" assessment (based upon the style of the coin), but fakes are getting better and there is still the possibility that it is false.