Well traveled rouble

OriginalDan

I'm pretty excited to have picked this one up on eBay last week. Chopmarked Russian coins are very, very tough to find. In Colin Gullberg's recent book on chopmarks, he estimates somewhere between 2-10 of these have survived with chopmarks - that's not many. He featured another one of these in his book, so we know the number is at least two. The weight of the rouble (20.73 g, .868 fine silver, .5785 troy oz) is much lighter than the highly favored mexican 8 reales (27.07 g, .903 fine silver, .786 troy oz), so there's one reason these aren't very common with chopmarks.

Apparently there was trade going on between the Russians and Chinese during this period, as Gullberg writes "One very interesting area of chopmark collecting is Russian coins. In his book, Hao reported of Russian tea traders in the mid 1850's. Shansi merchants went to the Bohea districts (now Wuyishanshi in Fujian Province) to represent Russian firms i the purchase of tea to be transported to Russia. These "Shansi men" purchased large amounts of tea in 1854. George V. W. Fisher, Jardine's agent, commented from Foochow in 1855: "I expect there is a large quantity (of tea) taken into Russia overland, for the Sansi (Shansi) men have again returned Sinchune (in Foochow) to buy tea..." It is not clear if Russian roubles were used in payment.

Rose reported that China was a source of silver for Russia as Russia mainly used paper money internally. However, Rose speculates that some silver must have made it from Russia to China, but why so little is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps it was turned into sycee. One reason certainly is the fact that Russian coins had less silver. The coin pictured is only 0.868 fine at 20.73 g. giving a net weight of 0.5785 oz. of pure silver, but the fact that the coin was underweight did not stop the Chinese from accepting and chopping other lower weight coins. Rose only had two chopmarked Russian coins in his collection and he states he did not know of any others. Thus the Russian rouble must be considered extremely rare." And by rare, he means rare with chopmarks.

I have become completely enamored with these well-traveled coins and I'm having a blast with the chopmarked type set. Throw out a coin/type you think might have been found chopmarked and I'll post an example if I have one!

asheland

That's very cool! I wasn't aware of chop marked Roubles.

EVillageProwler

@OriginalDan

Are you sure about the composition of your coin? My Russian is weak, but the undated side's legend is something like "clean-ish-word silver-ish-word 4 gold-ish-word 21 share". Maybe it's saying that the coin is 16% gold?

Need help with Russian from someone please... @TwoKopeiki perhaps?

As an aside, I notice that the coin does not bear the Tsar's name anywhere, which is a surprise to me.

EVP

EVillageProwler

Actually, I think the legend says "PURE SILVER 4 ZOLOTNIK 21 something"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolotnik

OriginalDan

Since my Russian is limited to "please", "thank you" and "fart" I'm no help here. I pulled the composition info from a number of sources including PCGS and NGC.

EVillageProwler

@OriginalDan said:
Since my Russian is limited to "please", "thank you" and "fart" I'm no help here. I pulled the composition info from a number of sources including PCGS and NGC.

Typical "guy" question: how to say "fart" in Russian?

Zoins

@asheland said:
That's very cool! I wasn't aware of chop marked Roubles.

Same here. That's the first I've seen or heard of. It's nice to know Roubles got around.

Thanks for posting the coin and background @OriginalDan!

TLeverage

Nice coin, good eye appeal, especially considering the rarity of the type.

Jackthecat1

A chopmarked ruble seems logical, considering the close proximity of Russia to China. Thank you for posting this example.

OriginalDan

Agreed Jack, you would think there would be many more. Thanks for all the comments!

WillieBoyd2

The coin is a standard Russian silver Ruble 1859-1885, Krause Catalog KM-Y25.

It does not have the Czar's name on it.

SaorAlba

The legend on the reverse translates as "fine silver 4 zolotnika and 21 dolya" - weights used until USSR era replaced them with metric weights.

BTW fart is пукнут - puknut. But you don't really know or appreciate Russian until you can curse like one - the language is rich with curse words and phrases.