gxseries

I knew I had this particular type in my collection but couldn't remember what year it is. Turns out I bought it about 15 years ago. (time flies...) Think this is 4 feathers?

Why would you want to buy a coin that commemorates how many people died from it? It could easily be your family member that may get affected. Bad taste.

I'm quite intrigued. Did some reading and gave it some thought. Let's leave the origins of the mint aside for the time being. The reference that I used is from Uzdenikov - the book that ViFi has shown. I'm only looking at Elizabeth I from 1755 - from the first overstriking event. Moscow mint has reasonably good mintage from 1755. For some reasons records are missing for 1760 and 1761 St Petersburg mint also shows some interesting data. From 1755 to 1759, gold coins have been regularly produced and all of a sudden, this stopped in 1760 and 1761. This recommenced in 1762. Silver coin production also took a hit of about 50% production loss. There are no records of copper coins struck in 1760 and 1761. Ekaterinburg Mint doesn't seem to be affected for that couple of years. The only explanation that I could see is the seven year war Russia had against Prussia. As any wars are involved, this most likely affects the production of coins. I think this warrants an investigation if production of coins are authorized - it just seems something is not quite adding up. I'm sure this may spark up some interesting discussion like what we had before That said, I have yet to buy your book, extant4cell! Shame on me.

Kind of hard to tell from the picture - the embossing seems to be unusually shallow compared to coins struck from that era. It could just be from the photos. It's understandable that since genuine examples are sold for several thousands of dollars, most people are rightfully cautious. The more documentations that you can find, the more it will help to support. I don't think anyone here has ever handled genuine example, much less seen one in person!

Wow. This is probably one of the most exciting discoveries here regardless of authenticity!

Thanks for the feedback ViFi. Im assuming I've got a normal type. Nothing screams too special to me.

Extent4cell, do you have mintage figures from Sestroretsk mint? Just wondered if the dies were transferred from St Petersburg - they aren't too far apart.

Was looking up about the 1859 ruble and found that there are two different varieties - convex and normal coinage. The convex type is apparently scarcer. Looked up on m-dv.ru and found it hard to tell the differences. Maybe it's easier to tell on hand...? Any tips to tell the differences? Thanks!

It's a bit of a strange market at the moment thanks to the virus. The only real positive is that the Australian dollar is possibly record low against the US dollars so export to US might be a great idea since there's a lot of collectors there. When the coins are budget, personally I don't try to aim for maximum dollars. Especially if they are low grade, I just put them in lots and sell them even if it comes to a small loss to me. After all I had a lot of great deals in the past and pass it on to new collectors. No point having too much coins taking up a lot of space. I'm on a mission to downsize at least half if not more...

This has been an interesting challenge. Haven't completed it yet but it seems somewhat doable. The portrait was to feature Sun Yat Sen who was the first president of the Republic of China. These coins were struck when China was literally falling apart as various provinces were striking their own coinage. A unified coinage was required and this meant huge production was required. The only mint that could fulfill this was from the other end of the world - Austria (!). This can be easily identified by the "A" mintmark. Mintmark "A". 20 fen with mintmark "A" can be surprisingly difficult to find. Something interesting to note is that master dies were prepared in Philadelphia and shipped to Shanghai. Coins struck in Austria do have some minor differences. Even at the start of this coinage, nickel coins were meant to be struck in pure nickel. However at Tientsin mint, 1936 10 fen coin was struck in nickel alloy as an attempt to cut cost. This is somewhat scarce to find. This is also an era when the Japanese started to occupy China in 1937, leading to WWII. This meant that good quality nickel coins were quickly withdrawn from circulation and were replaced with cheaper base metals such as brass and aluminum. Supposedly the Americans were involved with the production of aluminum coinage. Mints were relocated towards the West as the Japanese started invading on the Eastern end. Aluminium coin This particular 1 fen coin is supposedly struck in Yunnan Province and is known as Shi Kwan type. I don't quite know what it's meant to mean but I'm assuming it's to do with the border design instead of the Greek inspired design. Mintage figure of this is not known and technical details found online are all wrong. In 1940, pure nickel coins were down sized and were struck in nickel copper and in small size. This did not last long as WWII continued on and nickel copper coins were last struck in 1943. The last coin struck was a copper coin in 1948 before China declared herself as communist. I made a type set of this - only 20 different coins but it may prove to be a real challenge. https://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/china_republic_type_set_1936_48 Also done up a page of what I have http://gxseries.com/numis/china/republic/china_republic.htm Please feel free to post yours!

Something looks very wrong - looks like a modern fantasy. Could not have been struck with the technology back then.

It has been a while - I have kinda put a brake on coin collecting. This is one of my older purchases a while back. Found another overstrike over Swedish ore. I was hoping to get a 1758 as I already have one. That's ok as this is a much clearer overstrike. Both coins surprisingly are overstruck over the same 1748 1 ore. I am under the impression that 1757 1 kopek are much scarcer than 1758 1 kopek based on mintage figures.

Everything is designed in photoshop. Some of my examples can be seen here. Some were scanned albums. https://issuu.com/gxseries

Is it plated by any chance? It's hard to tell with the weight as modern coins have very large weight tolerance - the quality control these days are no longer there compared to precious metals.

extant4cell has an example of 2 kopek overstruck over 2 ore. This is actually very difficult to find. I am still hunting for an example. Have to hunt my 1 kopek over 1 ore example.

A copy Russian ruble coin. Who knows what metal was used to strike such coins - toxic heavy metal?

I got around to free up a bit of time and decided to work on the early Korean machine coinage. Had to rephotograph everything as I used different cameras along the way and the photos look terrible. I'm still improving on my photography skills (and website skills at the same time...) Some day I would like to redesign the digital album as I designed it back a decade ago. This was designed in A4 size instead of the slightly smaller B5 size that Dansco and other manufacturers use. Some minor things that I discovered while I was photographing these coins are that the alignments are just all over the place! One cannot use the 'dots' for alignment. It is known that the early Gwangmu coins are meant to be aligned where the dragons' head are in a vertical line. Unlike the Japanese coins, they are often aligned with dots around the character 'x sen' or to the Meiji character. The same also happens with the dragon coinage. The biggest offender that I noticed is with the phoenix alignment for coins struck 1905 - 1910. Even with major TPGs - most catalog and slabs that I have seen are aligned to the bottom dots "x chon". Instead I strongly believe that the alignment is meant to be where the phoenix's head is held high at 12 o'clock instead of the rooster like alignment at 10 o'clock. I think I can close the book on this collection - I have done the best for the past decade and that will be it for me (for now). All other coins are too rich for my blood. I personally like how they look like for size comparison Added some reading material if you are into this particular coinage. The digital album is also quite neat - those holes shall be left as it is! http://gxseries.com/numis/koreatype/koreatype_early_all.htm

Good to hear from you Art! Hope all is well and take care!

This was an interesting lot that appeared out of nowhere. The seller must had very similar taste as mine. Some are simply rare - maybe I have seen them appear just once every few years. From what I gather, they have been sitting in his collection since 1970s (!). It's one of those hoards where you can't win them all. I did end up with a key date that I have been looking for the past decade. First up is 1894 5 fun coin. This is somewhat a 'weak' rotation error coin - not very common but can happen. Quality control was quite poor back then. The usual alignment is meant to be the dragons facing in a vertical line. In this case it looks like it's rotated around 20 degrees. You will see an example in the next photo Next up is an unusual off center coin, 1895 1 fun, 2 characters. If you collect Korean coins from this era, error coins like this is very uncommon, if not scarce! Last coin is one that I have been hunting for a good decade. I believe I have only seen just 5 examples for offer - 3 in damaged condition, one was one of my hands and this is one that I finally obtained. 1895 1/4 yang, 2 characters. This is not to be confused with the 1895 3 characters version As of why this version is significantly rarer than the other, I cannot explain why. An interesting aspect of early Korean coinage is that while the coins were first struck in Dec 1892, coins were not released to the public until Aug 1894 !!! There are reports that the mint in Incheon struggled to strike sufficient quantity but there is also a very huge political aspect behind the scene. Welcome the Fat Man - Yuan Shi Kai The situation gets very messy - while the Korean mint was relatively new (with German technology), the mint employees were from Japan. And why would China be involved? Korea at this time was a Chinese protectorate. and of course was not keen on having the Japanese being too involved. Ultimately the root cause of the first Sino - Japanese war in Jul 1894 was over Korea. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War So how does the 'Fat Man' get involved in this discussion? Yuan Shi Kai being a faithful advisor to Korea strongly objected to the Japanese striking coins with the wording "Great Chosen". This is simply a bit too close to the "Great Nippon". It seems that he had a valid concern - Japan did invade China after all A Japanese yen coin struck around this era - 1894 1 yen. Notice how similar the design is as well as the wording "Great Nippon" Did his opinion mattered? It seems like it did - at least for one year. In 1892, all coins were struck with the wording "Great Chosen" and in 1893, "Chosen". 1894 seems like is a mixed bag - perhaps both types were struck, one before and after the Japanese invaded China. The mint employees probably didn't care in 1895 and 1896 as both types were used - this is an interesting puzzle that I never looked at closely. I'll present more when I get around to it - the history of early Korean machine struck coinage presents a lot of challenges as well as plenty of troubled times ahead. Feel free to share your early Korea coinage, it will be 'fun' !

Hi! I have been hiding as I have quite a few things to do. Got this interesting brockage coin but I can't figure out what the year is on this coin A larger picture It would be struck in between 1711 - 1719. Peter I copper coinage is not my specialty...

This is a really poor example. I don't know if it is a SPB 2 kopek but it looks more like EM die? Looks like on my record it is overstruck over SPB baroque 1 kopek. I am not too sure if the underlying year is visible. Have to find it...

Pretty neat!

I'm not too sure thedeadpoint. Possibly inspired by Canada? These are meant for circulation but are not common. Manfred1: I think it's a bit rich to send the whole lot for free 😛

I didn't think of m-dv but WOW... Thanks for the link!

Has anyone been checking out how high this is going? Would like to see the final value... I'm sure the seller would have got a shock. https://www.ebay.com/itm/RUSSIA-a-1-POLTINA-1883-SPB-DS-KM24-10-2gr/382474528832?hash=item590d422840:g:l7AAAOSwSEZbCxqJ I know mintage figure is probably very low and I don't remember seeing this particular year. I believe I saw a 1883 ruble sold (non commemorative) and that went for some crazy figure...