Timofei

It is my duty to correct this information. We have got first hand report from a user of coins.lave.ru forum that he purchased 2 of OST series coins (first identical tweens) in February 2011 from a Canadian-Polish seller. So far this is the earliest confirmed date. At that moment the 2 'coins' were not graded.

I have already posted (about 3 years ago, my guess) another 'fascinating' product of the same origin. It was recorded here, on the Russian SM forum and by Monety i Medali auction blog. This is from your first picture.

If we were discussing a shady seller... The problem is that many people trust the grading companies. A slabbed coing gets good chance of being resold many times without much inspection. Even if the original seller discontinues, slabbed coins may reappear here and there. By the way NGC graded those fakes too.

It think that the set of the OST series we are discussing was made probably in the second half of 2012. I make this conclusion by the number of messages in the internet indicating rumors about 'Lithuanian hoard', cheap offerings of OST coins and the dates of grading. Speaking in general... The earliest message from the guy of Belorussian 'factory' I found in the web was from 2007, when he had displayed many dies 'made in the past'. As you may see from the URL I posted they are not hiding and their business is quite legal. They make copies and not selling forgeries )) They even pay taxes I guess )))

It is always good to see oneself with other people eyes. Thanks for sharing, Sigi, it is all very much like you described. I wish it could be different.

Hi, all, This is to alert you about confirmed massed distribution of iron 'occupation' series dated of 1916. Though the rumors started to appear this Spring, now we have it confirmed that PCGS (and possibly NGC) graded many fakes as Mint State. These fakes are made in Belorussia by a manufacturer URL to fake production factory. Apparently many coins were graded by grading companies and many were sold via eBay. For example this seller from Poland sold 12 fakes in the past 2 months: view listings User globaldjs made a sort of an investigation and he tried to identifyl PCGS numbers for some fake coins as well as their distinguishing features. Please check your collections and make sure you may return the fakes to the sellers. A brief list made by globaldjs is here. You may check the numbers from the list and see the pictures

I second your opinion. We have 2 pictures of 2 different original dies that are kept in the Hermitage museum and St Petersburg mint museum plus the image of the Kazakov catalogue coin. Stack's coin does not match.

Please see below my message. These were posted earlier in the Russian forum. State History Museum mentioned that the edge defect is very characteristic for 18th century technology (owner's foto with red circle). Here is the link to a brief video: http://rutube.ru/video/25cae6c58578d80eb783ce27d3570f85/ I think that the very fact that 3 coines were discovered together is not an unusual matter. One batch was sent from the Mint to Finance authorities. They might have the batch shipped and somebody collected a salary (and hoarded it as received). To keep you updated, myself and other guys have looked through Steve's picture pack with no new info. The only 4th coin apart of the 3 triplets was from Niko-Kuenker-Niko resales.

That would be great indeed. M-dv site lists many coins, but maybe we can find something interesting of this die.

Hi, Steve, Yes, Niko pair combination has been discovered as fourth coin of this die (I forgot to mention in the original post, sorry, my mistake). How many dies do you estimate are there in 1799 CMMB?

Hi, all, As some of you might have read on the Russian forum, a very interesting issue is being discussed about apparently unknown die pair of the 1799 CM MB rouble. For those of you who cannot read Russian (original long thread) I give a brief summary: A small hoard of 3 identical roubles was discovered in Southern Russia, triplets are of the same state of preservation and of the same die pair. The owner posted a picture of 3 coins together: The pictures created much controversy because some insisted that all 3 coins are original, while some thought they are copies. The owner is selling them and a buyer made expert evaluation in Russian GIM (History Museum in Moscow) by Mr. Shiryakov. The expert confirmed that the coin was original. Now, even after the Museum gave positive verdict some people still have doubts. We have tried to find images of the similar die pair on the net, but so far we located only 1 coin and though its source is completely different the grade is the same Some collectors wrote that there are about 150 1-1799-SM-MB images of different die pairs in different grades but this particular die pair is nowhere to be found. I hope that maybe any of you have the coin (or images) of this particular die combination to share. It would also help to find out how many dies and die pairs are there overall if somebody have statistics info.

Guys, Thank you for sharing these pictures. It is a nice thing sometimes to browse the forum and get aestetic pleasure!