alexbq2

Actually, not that uncommon for Ivan's and subsequent Boris' rules. After the trouble began the weight (and correspondingly the size) of the coins was reduced, and they just kept getting smaller and smaller as time went by. As a result Peter's kopeck is smaller than Ivan's denga (1/2 kopeck).

IMHO both coins are scarce and expensive, but the first one is a one year type which in my opinion makes it more desirable. Plus it is a very nice design.

I saw it on eBay not too long ago, also available from the author, he is active on several popular Russian coin forums.

A very nice coin, and 1827 is better than 1829.

Congrats! I was wondering who got it. My bid was, shell we say, much too light.

Congrats to Rarenum! http://www.ebay.com/itm/251478724384 The coin is from an old Markov auction, isn't it?

There should be something under the 9 (of 1790) as well.

Plus, I am intrigued by the situation in Ukraine, so less attention to the coins and more to the politics around my home towns of Kharkov and Sumy. I think I will pitch a new game to Milton Bradley - 'Hungry Hungry Putin!' The balls will have names of former Soviet republics, and our illustrious leader will try to gobble them up as quickly as possible. Game will only have single player mode.

Very true, but on top of that there's a real dichotomy in availability of wire coins between the West and the East. There's a huge supply of them in Russia/Ukraine/Lithuania because of the metal detecting. In the West we don't have much and what we have ends up being 10X more expensive then it is in the over-saturated East.

R.I.P.

I can tell you it's from the time of Mikhail Fedorovich.

There was one in Copper/Bronze at the New Your Sale Auction XXIV in 2010. That's the only one I found, saw a dozen sale records for the silver one. The medallion is part of a set of famous generals of Napoleonic Wars, mostly Prussians. They've got Blücher, Gneisenau, York von Wartenburg, Tauentzien von Wittenberg, Karl Philipp Prince of Schwarzenberg. I guess Prussians really liked Barclay de Tolly.

Have seen a few of these in silver in MiM's auction database, none in copper. Doesn't have Diakov's reference number, can't find it on Rudenko's website either.

Something like this?

Doesn't this profile actually look like a portrait of Peter on the silver coins?

I think the days of "dug up plenty" might be coming to an end. Well, maybe not an end but a slow down is expected. First of all, a decade of digging does make a difference, the quantity of finds is reportedly reducing. Secondly, a new law has been passed in Russia, I'm not very familiar with it, but the general sentiment is that it is meant to crack down on metal detecting. Of course Russian laws are fickle and are not enforced equally, only time will tell if this one will really have an impact.

You need to free up space by deleting images that you posted earlier (which sucks), or you can use OmniCoin or a 3rd party image hosting service.

Just to finish up the A3 tokens there is also a death token out there. Presumably minted in Germany, comes in silver and aluminium. I only have the AL one, I do want to point out that while we are all pretty use to aluminium, in 1894 it was still a pretty exciting new metal, that was fairly costly to refine.

You have the Rudenko's book! I burn with envy! Rarenum had it for sale on eBay for some time, but it was ridiculously expensive (at least for me). Do you have his books on beard tokens or the 1917 revolution tokens? What you (or Rudenko) said is interesting. It does appear that A3 coronation was immensely popular, much more so than N2's coronation (at least judging by tokens and coins). Any idea why? Was it the assassination of A2 that inspired this public sentiment? To answer your question, I've seen the copper one a couple of times. It does seem more elusive than the silver version. But I think the nickel one is the hardest to find, and in my opinion it is the best looking one. How does Rudenko rank it?

May be we can have a 'Show and Tell' thread here. I'm hoping it may provide the context in which members could present and discuss items that interest them. For instance, I have just acquired another Alexander 3 coronation token. This one was a bit illusive. I'm happy to have finally acquired it. There are quite a few coronation tokens of Alexander the 3rd. I'm not sure why they are so numerous. Seems that his coronation was heavily promoted, or perhaps was very popular. I believe that even the A3 coronation rouble is more common that the subsequent N2 coin. The above is one of the more impressive looking tokens (IMHO). It is I believe made of nickel. There is another official looking coronation token that was issued in silver and in copper: Apart from these, there is a multitude of brass tokens that were "private" issue. I'm not sure how many varieties exist, they were originally silvered.

I'm not sure ebay is the best place to look for such coins. The ones in your links don't look good enough to warrant such high prices, the second one has a hole. Maybe check auctions on sixbid.

The Great Alchemist on the russian forum told me not to touch it. So is NCS worth a try?

I don't know about that. I'm not seeing a lot of bargains.

Hard to tell without knowing what we are talking about.

What do you do with it? Soak the coin? For how long?