Completed Soviet Union non-commemorative ruble coins

[gxseries]

Won the lot of them a while ago and forgot about them completely until I was doing a bit of clean up.

Some reckon that this is easy but I beg to differ. While the catalog values for each coin may not be very high, some years in particular from 1965 to 1973 are a lot tougher than what many think. You might be able to find many Soviet coins in junk coin lot including 50 kopek and some commemorative rubles but I have rarely seen hoards of rubles in such coin lot.

These days when I look at ebay, prices for a lot of the common XF+ ruble coins (1980s onwards) are commanding at least 5-10 dollars. Coins from the 60s to 70s are priced insane - some are asking for 30 - 50 dollars if not more.

I reckon it's A LOT easier to complete an entire set of Soviet commemorative coin set (excluding the Barcelona commemorative coins) instead of this non-commemorative ruble coins. As of why, I have no idea.

Here's a couple of photos:





With this, I have completed every single Soviet ruble coin that has been released excluding varieties. Maybe you have some of these in your collection?

[Figleaf]

Many years ago, I was walking around in a part of Singapore's Chinatown that disappeared not long after. On a fantastic, smelly, chaotic street market, I encountered a "stall" that was actually an old, wooden hand cart with a thick layer of coins at the bottom, covered in sticky grime.

Most of the coins were common or worse, but I grabbed a kilo or so of the better looking pieces. Among them, were quite a few Russian copper-nickel commemorative roubles. When I cleaned them, over half turned out to be proofs. At the time, the uncs would do the equivalent of €1.50 to 2 and the proofs were around €4.

He had many rouble circulation pieces as well, but I didn't check out the dates as I was (and still am) a type collector. Seeing how much trouble you have getting the dates of the circulation coins, I am grateful for that choice.

Peter

[ciscoins]

I reckon it's A LOT easier to complete an entire set of Soviet commemorative coin set (excluding the Barcelona commemorative coins) instead of this non-commemorative ruble coins. As of why, I have no idea.

The mintages of the commemorative roubles were much higher than of the regular ones. The majority of the commemorative roubles could be found in circulation during 2-3 weeks, and among the regular roubles you had a chance to find only 1964 and, sometimes, 1965 and 1966. And nothing else. Regular roubles of the 1970s from circulation (not from the mint sets) were sometimes even more expensive than 2 kopeks 1925 and 1927. Then, in 1990, the Central Bank emptied its storages, and the regular roubles of all the previous years appeared all together at once; but their quantity was still rather low.

[gxseries]

Ivan,
That would explain why the later year coins from 1980s onwards that I have seen for sale look aUNC. I guess the commemorative rubles were popular back then?

Are the mintage of general circulating Soviet coins other than commemorative coins still classified information?

Last question - would you happen to have an explaination of why the general circulation coins had different size from comemorative coins? For example the 1967 commemorative coins were struck in all different planchets from regular coins. This also applies to all ruble coins.

[ciscoins]

Ivan,
That would explain why the later year coins from 1980s onwards that I have seen for sale look aUNC. I guess the commemorative rubles were popular back then?

Among the collectors - yes, they were popular because they were the cheapest and the easiest to get. And for the circulation these commemorative coins were too big. The cashiers didn't have enough space in their cash drawers and easily got rid of them if you asked to give you the change with these coins.

Are the mintage of general circulating Soviet coins other than commemorative coins still classified information?

Yes. Current Russian leaders consider themselves the successors of Soviet leaders, so they don't want to make any Soviet secrets open. Even if this secrecy looks silly.

Last question - would you happen to have an explaination of why the general circulation coins had different size from comemorative coins? For example the 1967 commemorative coins were struck in all different planchets from regular coins. This also applies to all ruble coins.

No idea. Maybe they just wanted to make something special, unusual. And didn't think about the usability: for example, if I'm not mistaken, the commemorative coins could not be used in vending machines because they had different weight.