extant4cell Posted August 21, 2015 Report Share Posted August 21, 2015 I have 3 of these overstrike coins 1793. One just over 20 g (standard), another one just over 28 g (about 8 g overweight) and another just over 13 g (about 7 g underweight). I know that weight difference is common in 18th c. copper. Just wonder if these differences are out of ordinary or not... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigistenz Posted August 21, 2015 Report Share Posted August 21, 2015 That would be about 40% overweight or underweight - pretty strange. As it is quite calm in the forum - would you let us see the pictures? I don't have any of the 2 kopeks now and the few I handled over the years appeared normal as to weight. Sigi . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
extant4cell Posted August 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2015 I'll take pictures some time next week and post them here. All of them have clear signs of overstriking from 4 kopecks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gxseries Posted August 24, 2015 Report Share Posted August 24, 2015 I think mine is around the 18g mark from memory. Quite ordinary. This coin is somewhat underrated as it's a lot harder to find compared to an overstruck 1793 5 kopek. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
extant4cell Posted August 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 24, 2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
extant4cell Posted August 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 24, 2015 All 3 coins have after-image of at lease two previous nominals: 4 kopecks and of previous to 4 kopecks coins. Middle coin is of a standard weight of 20+ g. One on the left is 28+ g, and one on the right 13+ g. Prescribed tolerance for normative weight has always been under 2% in 18th c as of 1730s. In his article on none-standard weights, Uzdenikov mentions (as extreme examples) а 1729 5 kopecks with the thickness like a kopeck and a weight of 10.5 g, also a 1759 2 kopecks with thickness like on 5 kopecks and a weight of 34.5 g. Furthermore, he mentioned two 1762 4 kopecks: one made by overstriking 1 kopeck, and another one overstriking 5 kopecks of previous issue!!! His theory was that although some coins were probably overstroke on wrong coins, some were made of a none-standard weight on purpose, and were used by the mints to correct defective batchs that was outside the tolerable weight variations (they measured copper coins in batches of a 100 rouble in value [or something like that]). The extremely light or heavy coins were added "in secret", to correct the weight variations, and in order to "pass" the batch of coins at the control weighing. So, it is possible that the blank for the 28+ g coin was cut from a sheet of copper meant for 5 kopecks production (but smaller in diameter compare to 5 kopecks and much lighter than them), while 13+ g coin blank was cut from sheet of copper meant for 1 kopecks (but larger in diameter and hence heavier than 1 kopecks)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigistenz Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 Hm, quite interesting. This would mean that you got two very rare variants of the rare 2kop1793EM. They all look genuine. I had read Uzdennikov's theory, too, but I cannot quite believe it. Imagine how difficult and time consuming it would be to fiddle with light and heavy coins in order to obtain the proper weight of a batch of, say, 100 rubles (= 5000 coins). Maybe they just mistakenly punched the 2 kopek planchets out of a wrong sheet of copper. Shit happens - even in our days. Anyway, you got an interesting set of 3, probably the only one in the West - congratulations. And thank you for sharing. (I love the heavy one on the left ) Sigi . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
extant4cell Posted August 25, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 Thank you Sigi! Not sure how rare they are (extreme weight variants), and if Uzdenikov was correct in his theory or not, but it looks believable that they were actually cut from "wrong" sheets of metal. What's interesting is that they went through at least 2 overstrikes and were not filtered out by mint's quality control. Perhaps, the extreme weights are more common in their original form (2 kopecks of Elizabeth or Cathrine-II)... I love the one on the right too, apart of being "overweight" it has one of the better images of this issue / type that can be found around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gxseries Posted August 31, 2015 Report Share Posted August 31, 2015 I think Uzdenikov's theory is feasible however I am not certain if this can be applied to 5 kopek. There are weight extremes for the 5 kopek and I have seen from 35g to 80g+. It may be plausible that the a 2 kopek sheet was accidently used for the underweight coin however I cannot think of any larger circulating coins other than the Siberian 10 kopek coins. I have an example at 76g from memory and it was quite thick at 6mm. \ Very nice examples of the coins! Mine isn't that nice at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
extant4cell Posted August 31, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 31, 2015 Here http://coins.su/forum/index.php?showtopic=72342&p=1809433 you can find stats collected over the last 4 years. In 4 years the min / max for 1757-1796 2 kopecks was 8.1g / 28.2g, and for the 5 kopecks 1758-1796 it was 20.9g / 90g. For Siberian 10 kopecks it was 50.6g / 90g. I weighted my 2 kopecks again, it's 28.9g, which is heavier than the maximum they found for this type. Didn't expect this. Pretty sweet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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