Steve D'Ippolito

Completing a set!

OK admittedly the platinum coin was BU, which stands for "Butt Ugly" in this case.

Well platinum didn't do all that well, why should gold have a lock on it?

I take it that in order to qualify a coin must weigh 2.5 grams? Should be interesting to see what people come up with for ten cent/tenth-dollar pieces (with the caveat that "dime" is, as far as I know, the legal name only in the United States).

It looks, on the coin as if he is seated facing away (knees are behind the crossbar representing the seat of the throne).

I miss my platinum type set. My beat up and ugly 3 ruble remnant is still a cool thing to show people at shows though.

Russia was certainly denomination happy; you had 1/4. 1/2. 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 kopeks and 1, 5, and 10 ruble coins, all at basically the same time, during Nicholas II's reign (I haven't looked closely at the books to see if there was a specific year where all of these were made, but certainly all of them were current--though the quarter ruble seems to have been very spottily produced). To top it off there were the 1897 7 1/2 and 15 ruble pieces but those were transitional pieces when the gold standard was altered so they don't really count. I can only imagine what the cash drawers in cash registers (and yes I believe those existed by the 1890s-1910s) looked like.

I should qualify/clarify what I said. it could conceivably be a fake--I don't handle enough of these to really know (who has?)--and it appears there aren't decent pictures. I just don't think from the picture that it was intended to read "1819."

Looks pretty solidly like a 2 to me.

The lettering for "in silver" isn't even centered properly.

So here's the question (for computer geeks). Can you float a check written in integers?

Aw that beats me. Got a 1962 Canadian quarter a couple of days ago, both silver and Canadian are unusual in these parts.

Continue with my type set. It's a bit difficult because it seems like I cannot find good seated liberty pieces, even though i still need NINETEEN subtypes.

Just a nit but it wasn't Elisabeth in 1724, it was Ekaterina (Catherine) I.

WW II I think. If it wasn't WW II it was WW I.

1523, anyone, anyone?

I still have this coin; I exhibit it as part of my "Russian Coins Of Conquest" exhibit (which took ANA World's Fair of Money Best of Show in 2007). Thanks!

One of my favorites is in my avatar. 50 kopeks masonic eagle, in unc... Alas I no longer have the coin (sold in Nov 2008 via World Wide Coins).

I concur, it reads Nerva Trajan ("Nerva Traianus"), which means the emperor we commonly just call Trajan (not the one we today call Nerva).

I heard the story once of German soldiers finding a room full of the things and literally scooping them up with their helmets.

Not only that, the shield nickel bore the motto, but the V and buffalo nickels did not. The buffalo nickel was the last coin holdout.

Sometimes detail missing from the curl is due to a weak strike, not wear.

Any reasonable price win in an auction for a Russian Imperial piece is a victory!

Oh but then it wouldn't stack. Except maybe in a tennis ball tube.

I did get a wheatie a couple of days ago. I tossed it into my bucket of wheaties I found in change without looking at the date, though. (It's a small bucket, and the oldest thing in it is a 1939.)