Steve D'Ippolito

By my reading it's the 250th anniversary of "Russian America" (i.e., Alaska) and there is a 1741 date on the medals. So 1991 would be the best guess (I suppose they could have been issued a year or two early). On the other hand one of the coins sports a 1732 date, and another says 1778, so I could be totally off base with this. Edit: Well DUH from the title you figured all that out already. Sorry.

So it is possible that mine isn't the ugliest one in existence! I haven't had a chance to see yours, Steve ... but these things are so rare, it's probably nice to own one in ANY condition (as long as it's genuine, that is). Once in a while, they do show up at auctions in AU or UNC ... possibly even proofs of these exist. I saw one (probably about MS-63) several years ago at a UBS auction, and it was quite a beauty to behold! As to the coins in the present auction, they were all 3 roubles, probably the most common dates (I didn't check). Those CAN be found in decent condition, but they regularly bring more than what these sold for. There was a gold error coin -- I think Catherine II period -- that made for some interesting bidding action. I think it went for CHF 11,000 or so. Actually I used to own an Unc (but with rim dings) 3 ruble, and a 6 and 12 in XF. (And if I were to tell you what I paid for them not much more than ten years ago you'd probably cry.) I hung on to my ugly one for sentimental reasons when I blew most of the collection out the door in the WWC auction of late '08. I have to say these are the coins I "miss" the most though. As for my remnant ugly piece, I entered it in PCI 2011 and it made it past all of the other entries in "other metals" but ultimately choked against pieces in silver and gold. Since I did enter it in PCI it's one of the few coins I have in Omnicoin:

So it is possible that mine isn't the ugliest one in existence!

The lettering on the reverse is ridiculously crude I literally said out loud, "What the f*** is this?" when I saw the picture.

It certainly is, and you captured the reflective nature of it nicely.

I think I saw that previous coin, and I agree.

The first two are indeed Russian banknotes. The first is a one ruble note of the Tsarist era. How many digits are in the serial number of the three ruble note?

The reason I said "smaller" is because I expect at some point in the future there will need to be a $2, $5 and $10 coin, and it would be cool if the series were all gold colored and increasing in size.

I've been saying for years these coins--as implemented--were an awful idea. (I am not opposed to dollar coins as such, I just don't think this composition and size for them is even remotely ideal.) Even when the coin doesn't turn some hideous shade of brown, they turn to an absolutely drab yellow almost immediately. Apparently they were done this way so that the magnetic signature and weight would closely resemble the Susan B. Anthony dollar, so that vending machine companies would have no trouble with the changeover. Well they at least got the coin to look different enough from the quarter that people didn't make that mistake any more. But I think they should have felt free (back when dollar coins were extremely uncommon) to go to a different size (smaller) and composition. But a less tarnish prone brassy colored alloy would have been much better. I personally never receive them in circulation, and never even see them where I live. I saw one the other day sitting in the bottom of a coffee-fund cup at an office, but that was visiting a city that apparently dispenses them from mass transit ticket machines as change.

I know nothing about the coin itself (I can't say for instance if it's genuine or not), but (at least by US grading standards) it is in far, far better than "Fair" condition (perhaps you are not in the US and Fair means something different where you are from). Fair denotes a 2 on a scale of 1-70. I can't find a description of this right off the bat, but About Good-3 (one step better) says the coin will have much of its lettering worn smooth and the date will be barely readable. This coin is at least a Fine-12 and that's me being as strictly anally conservative as the descriptions could justify. (I know that European grading is more conservative than US grading.) On your coin some parts of the design are a bit weak but that is more than likely the way the coin was made with the actual minting process resulting in an uneven strike.

And likewise, that was educational. It never occurred to me to look into other phrasings.

Apparently the D mintmark fell off sometime in the past.

Correct, my mistake.

The 1935Gs without motto apparently were printed in 1963 judging by the signature pairs. According to the links given (and thank you Balaji Murphy!), 1950E series $10 notes (Granahan/Fowler) were released as late as 16 September 1968, and as far as I know those had no motto on them. (Meanwhile Series 1963 $10 notes (with motto) were coming out starting 24 April of 1964.) This is another case of overlap like with the silver certificates, and as I pore over the information I am sure there will be more. So the process took over ten years.

I started trying to research when "In God We Trust" appeared on US paper money. I've discovered what most people "know," that it started in 1957, isn't the whole story. Apparently the only thing that actually happened that year was that a "Series 1957" silver certificate came out with the motto on it. The notes had Priest-Anderson signature pairing. There was a 1957A and 1957B as well, the last one being Granahan-Dillon signatures, which means they were issued after January of 1963, since Kathryn Granahan became treasurer then. Other denominations followed only in the 1960s with Series 1963 notes (and that is also when the first $1 FRN came out; before that it was basically all silver certificates). And those would have Granahan-Dillion signatures. So here is my question: there are also 1935F (Priest-Anderson), 1935G (Smith-Dillon) and 1935H (Granahan Dillon) series of silver certificates! The 35G and H undeniably came out _after_ the Series 1957 notes did, and we know this due to the signature pairing. (In God We Trust was added partway through 1935G to these notes--sometime during the Kennedy Administration) So why were Series 1935G and 1935H silver certificates being produced well after series 1957 was introduced? Also, is there a site that will give you the true issue date range of US paper money (FRNs, US notes, Silver certificates) based on the signature pair? My Google-fu keeps failing and I get pointed to the same crap sites that either trying to sell me a bank note or just list all the signature pairs but don't give dates.

Maybe this whole site is just a trap. Eventually they'll haul us all off to coin collector rehab. While there you will have to use a debit card for everything.

I'm not sure that 10:1 would be adequate to put it back where it used to be. And it's probably not worth the trouble for merely one zero. But it's sure be nice if they'd stop the slow devaluation. People consider it "normal" now and I've even heard some people act like this is an infallible sign of progress! We are somehow "behind" Europe because we still use dollar bills! (Being "behind" with showing the symptoms of a bad trend is not really all that bad a thing!)

Congrats! I find it interesting that something as recent as that has such low populations. But I am ignorant on Canadian coinage. Does it happen to be a tough date?

Not surprising.

http://www.cyberian.com/us_coins/C1.html

I concur. The surfaces look totally wrong.

Well, you've named about ten presidents and I don't imagine there's be more than about six coins. I suppose some could be put on paper money instead--perhaps a president should appear only once across all paper and coinage? (Why is Grant on the paper money? Apparently he did something important to the history of paper money--which to me is not enough justification. And I'd use the same argument against Theodore Roosevelt--importance to the history of money alone doesn't justify his portrait.) I am not sure if you are claiming that the march of dimes was sufficient reason to put FDR on a coin. If you were, I disagree. But I think it was sufficient reason to choose to put him specifically on the dime once it's decided he rated a coin for other reasons (like, oh, say, getting us through World War II). (I state again that I don't think he deserves it (for other reasons) but acknowledge that most disagree with me, and suspect most still will in 2046. C'est la vie. The point though is to not rush to put people on coins while still emotional about the death of a president.) I'll argue against myself here: it's possible Kennedy will be remembered a very, very long time as being the president who took the initiative to commit us to a moon landing. If we ever actually get ambitious about space travel, that could be remembered as well as Prince Henry the Navigator is today. And I tend to have more favorable opinions about his domestic policies than I do for _either_ Roosevelt, actually. Holes? Well that would certainly make the artists' jobs more difficult, particularly if you want portraits! I'd end up opposed to them for that reason. A well-off-center hole could solve that problem, but it would be a nightmare for vending machines (much more so than merely changing size, thickness, and composition, which I stated I wouldn't be concerned about), since coins rotate inside them and an off-center hole would cause a wobble. That could be useful--checking for a wobble could be a good slug detector--but if I had to guess it would be so only if you can guarantee the same position for the hole every time a coin is dropped into the machine, and you can't. I'd be less averse to polygons, but that too would likely cause vending machine issues. I know, however, that both on center holes and polygons have been solved. In fact a polygonal shape for either the "high" or "low" denomination series might be an additional way to make the coins distinctive.

I'd still like to see distinct thicknesses. I tend to agree about the portraits. I'd as soon ditch presidents as you would but failing that: Both Roosevelt and Kennedy were put on their respective coins the year after they died. Too soon! Really, history had not really rendered a verdict on either of them; their portraits were put on in surge of emotion after their deaths. Using your century criterion, Roosevelt, I believe will still be considered a great president in 2045 (as much as I don't like anything he did domestically, I believe OTHERS will consider him great), but I doubt anyone will give a rat's hindquarters about Kennedy in 2063. In point of fact, I think Franklin was as good a choice for a coin as just about any president would be, and certainly a better choice than Kennedy.

Looks normal to me--within the limits of what lighting will do when you photograph something.

There are some people calling for the elimination of the nickel (e.g., Dick Johnson), and presumably all prices would have to be multiples of ten cents, but that cannot be done, because the quarter is not a multiple of ten cents. Our two smallest coins would have a value ratio of 2.5:1. You would be unable to make 30 or 40 cents without having a lot of dimes with you. I doubt we could switch from quarters to 20 cent pieces without a lot of fuss (or a complete change to sizing for our "silver" coins), but I wonder how much a clad half dime would cost to make? If I were allowed to totally redesign our currency from scratch, without regard to being backward compatible, but didn't have permission to lop zeros off the dollar or put us on a gold or silver standard, I'd have a small (but thick) gold colored, reeded edge dollar (with room for larger multi-dollar gold-colored coins of larger size, so that "big" denominations increase in size). Whatever alloy it is would be solid, not some funky plating that tarnishes ugly and rubs off. (The current dollar coin plating is quite an exotic mix.) For less than a dollar, I'd have some sort of solid silver-colored alloy with a smooth edge, maybe cupronickel, maybe not, and the coins would follow a logical size sequence. 50, 20, 10 and _maybe_ 5 cents, but by replacing the quarter with 20 cents, we'd be free to ditch the 5 cents when inflation renders it pointless.