gxseries

Well honestly, I don't know if I am going to see anything more beautiful than this. Gube's work on this 1834 ruble and the 1839 ruble are insane stunning. (but I think, this is his best work) So stunning that the Russian mintmasters had to "copy" his design of Alexsander I later on in 2002 on the 25 ruble silver coin. http://www.cbr.ru/eng/bank-notes_coins/Bas...t_num=5115-0030 Also, the Column itself is another masterpiece, every single details of the bottom of the column is there, which is indeed quite difficult to work with such micro scale. You can even see the lines in the gates! The angel at the top has also wings that are quite defined... it's almost indescrible... the only disappointing about that angel is that, her / it's face is nothing more than a dot. I will try to scan an ultra XXL size later on, when I get back home... which is like months away...

OMG WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!! I must now move to your place... O_O

Oh, it's definately not bronze / copper. It's definately silver, I guess the scanner had a bit of gamma gay contrast in it. The edge of this coin as follows: This is an extrusive edge, as in the text is extruded off from the edge. I think this was used until 1805 or so, and then in 1807, intrusive text was introduced. I am guessing because silver planchets were almost perfected then, and also, to prevent people from chipping of silver bits... P.S. Russian coins are definately interesting!!!

It is interesting what was happening around Russia at that time. There were several mints that were working at the same time, which was either Saint Petersburg, Izhora Mint, or the Ekaterinburg. The Saint Petersburg and Izhora mints definately used machines, but the Ekaterinburg ones were outdated, (marked as EM) as they had to be hand pressed and hence you see some crude strike with the 2kopeck coins, usually not circular. This particular coin is not from the Ekaterinburg mint, but instead frrom the Izhora mint, somewhat "scarce" as it is not a typical mint. But as you can see, I guess the mintmaster must have been having fun or something like that... I am assuming that the year is 1814, the date is pretty faint in this picture, but yes, there is a trace of 4 in it

A Russian mintmaster, that must have gone drunk kept on hammering on the poor coin... how many strikes do you see there? I am thinking, there has to be around 4 there. Although the coin dealer said there was only 2...

Looks like some kind of planchet flaws? I am not an error expert

Ah I see. Well, I don't know, but I guess Russia must be getting quite lame in using 1kg gold and silver coins to mint them... those are like the big profittable coins... I mean, instead of making 10000 silver coins, the mint just has to mint 100 or 1000 ultra limited 1kg coins, and making collectors... for a limited range of collectors... like for the Russian oil tycoons... I would have been happier if they minted them out of palladium / platinum. I haven't seen Russia using palladium and platinum ever since the Russian economy crisis.

Geez, I should ask for a world coin contest next time. I didn't even get the time to look at it

Paul's I ruble coin A slight history of Paul I: Paul I is the son of Katherine II. He became the leader of Russia in 1796, and tried to stop the French Revolution hitting Russia. But as he treated his guards badly, he had a lot of other issues. Unfortunately he did not live very long, his guards murdered him in 1801, as they were too unhappy with his way of treating them and incompetences. Paul I was an unbelievable tasteless person yet religious. His principle is too simple - to make things as simple as possible. But sadly, Paul I certainly has no taste for fine arts, as the coin designs reflected his religious views. On the obverse of the coin, it shows the Roman figure "I" is surrounded by the letter "П" for "Paul" and then by four crowns. It is then surrounded by the text "МОНЕТА ЦЕНА РУБЛЬ 1797" (till 1801) which just means, this coin is a face value of one ruble. On the reverse, shows an inscribed bible text, "НЕ НАМЪ, НЕ НАМЪ, А ИМЯМИ ТВОЕМУ" or read as “Nie nam, nie nam a imeni Tvoemu”, which is translated to “Not unto Us, Not unto Us, but in Thy Name”. This text is then surrounded by four floral designs. Note that this is one of the rare times that the double head eagle was not used in design. Also note that this coin series was one of the shortest living in the whole series of Imperial Russian coins. It only lasted from 1797-1801. The reverse design is very striking similar to the Dutch gold ducat trading coin, in fact, the Russians were illegally minting such coins for trading purposes! This is the most clear evidence that Russia did copy the design from the Dutch. Technical Details of this coin: Size: ~39mm (due to the crude shape of the coin) Type of metal: Silver Purity: 83 1/3 Weight: ~20.73 grams Rim: Inscribed text of "ВОСЕМЬДЕСЯТ ТРЕТЬЕЙ С ОДНОЙ ТРЕТЬЮ ПРОБЫ" ("OF EIGHTY THREE AND ONE THIRD STANDARD") Paul's I silver rubles are not suprising hard to find, considering it's age. It is the half ruble and quarter ruble that proves to be very hard to find, including the silver kopeks. On the other hand, Paul's I copper coins are not too horribly hard to find. (unless you are into varieties...) Hope you enjoyed it

Yup, akdrv changed the settings so I could change the title too now, not just board admins

OMG thanks!!! ;) Now no more failure typos for me

lol I should have googled, but yea, it seems that they had declared independence at one point before...but why call themselves the Republic of Tatarstan... Now it seems that it is a federal subject of Russia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatarstan Honestly, I thought it was surprising, as Russia so far has minted large precious metal coins to important themes, or cities, as such the "protect the world species" and "300th anniversary of st petersburg". I am guessing that Tatarstan is pretty important to Russia in many ways...

Grr... I want to change the title so that it will fit like yours Tane, but I still can't figure out how And I have to change the subheading to the first silver commemorative coin... Indeed, Russian coins are hitting horribly scary prices that I have never seen before in just two years... I am shocked. I mean, if this is a stock market... you can see the graph hitting rocket high.

Wow, you don't get taxed on gold bullions that's around 22k gold? Quite a few countries that I have been through does tax on anything that has >20k gold. But again, that depends from countries to countries. Australia recently decided to tax gold bullion coins just last year... Yes, acetone is perfectly safe for almost pure gold coins, as they are quite unreactive. You just don't try to use it on silver or copper or any other metals (except palladium, platinum and titanium - but you are more likely to find such coins really hard to come by... ) as you would not know the results. ageka: Don't worry about the language barrier, I can perfectly understand you I don't like my gold coins any less than 0.900 either

Yes, I can edit the text, but I can't just edit the topic... >_< as in the title... I don't know if admins only can do that...

Maybe I have not been toooooo clever, but I have problems trying to edit a typo in a topic that I have set. I know that you can edit the text, but I think I have troubles looking for the area to edit the topic. How can I edit the topic

Geez... I wonder what it could be that is "shocking"...

Er no, it's not necessary true. It depends on the gold alloy. If you have coins that's at least .900, dipping gold coins in acetone is pretty hard to tell. It isn't very true if you have a 14k gold coin, but that is still called "gold".

Same here! Although I usually type the whole thing out...

Just the beginning of this month, Russia has released 4 special commemorative coins about Tatarstan. Central Bank Russia homepage But Tatarstan is supposed to be an independent country! I know that Russia has commemorated precious metal coins before like this, Kremlin But isn't Russia overdoing it this time with 1kg silver and gold coin? Earlier on, I was talking about Russia releasing a 10 ruble bi-metal coin about Kaliningrad, what do you think is going on? Has the Russian mint ran out of ideas to mint coins? Or are there still some Soviet men working in the mint, and have no idea how the world has changed?

You know, you have to know what you are going to clean. You might be able to get away with silver and gold with little cleaning, but obviously coin specialists can tell them right away, or rather some novices can tell that too. But if you happen to have any copper coins, never ever clean them, unless you have those "green" copper oxide. If you clean them, you are more likely to find pitholes which you may never thought of, but of course, there is a reason to it. When oxidiation happens, corrosion happens and it eats away part of the metal. And so, when you try to remove such the corrosion, you are removing part of the "dirt" that covered some of the pitholes that it caused... There is a reason why coin collectors rarely like coins being cleaned... because most of the time, they are quite evident and usually undesirable for too many reasons. Depending on the type of metal coins that you got there, if you have silver or copper, it is better if you get some kind of silica pack to remove any moisture unless your area happens to be dry, which is a good story. Moisture is just bad for the coins. And yea... I think everyone else filled in the other parts that I wanted to say.

Hahahaha overstrike!!! That would be so neat!!!!!!!!! Maybe a 5 euro cent would be perfect for that purpose. I would love to see interesting overstriking

Here is another two links that you might find it interesting. My coins are something like that too, both unifaced, except that mine isn't gold plated. 1988 Trial 50 ruble Gold Coin 1989 Trial 50 ruble Gold Coin What do you think

Grrrrrrr 7/7 is my birthday and I was tempted to pick the same day Oh well, I will be horrible and put in the date 12 July 2005

My first guess was 8,765 (you can find it in the earlier post) Second guess: 18,765