Mainly a US coin collector. Was searching through some foreign coins and found this large, heavy coin. Anyone know what it is?
Russian 5 Kopek 1767 EM (Ekaterinburg) from rule of Catherine II. Not sure of value - my Krause gives it $5-10 but that was before the Russians started buying their coins back. Nice find!
Thanks for the help! This has to be the largest coin i've ever found. Do you know if it is pure copper?
@PaddyB- you must have a pretty old Krause indeed! Here's the "current" Krause data on the NGC page. Says $25 in Fine, which is about where I'd grade this one, personally. In my experience buying those in bulk pick bins at shows 10-15 years ago, I was paying about $20, so that seems about right to me. This coin has somewhat funky color and flan flaws, but that's pretty much par for the course on these, so I'd say it falls into the average range in terms of quality. It's got "character". Many of them do. These are cool coins. I always affectionately referred to them as "whopper coppers", for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who's ever held one in hand and felt the sheer heft of it. If you're ever in a David-and-Goliath situation, armed with nothing but a slingshot and your Russian 5-kopeck piece, that coin would make pretty deadly slingshot ammunition- you'd knock your giant opponent out cold.
Here are three I posted over on Collectors Universe in 2012. I believe I paid $10-15 for them, which I considered a fair price. As mentioned, I had previously bought some others at the FUN show in the early 2000s for $20 each- but since that was a pick bin I was able to be choosier. 1768-EM 1772-EM 1780-EM This one was cleaned, like the coin in the original post here (and many of them out there), but has sharper detail than the other two in this post- VF-ish, I'd say.
Pretty sure this is double struck. If this is an overstruck coin, it would be significantly rarer. Some years of EM 5 kopeks are overstruck but are quite scarce to rare.
I figured it was overstruck based on the crown on the date side. You can see remnants of a much smaller and differently shaped crown that the normal one for this type was struck over.
I agree with the double struck consensus, but would gladly be proven wrong. I am also using this thread as an excuse to post my 5 Kopeks. I think it and another coin from the bin that I did not purchase shows the technical problems with minting these very well. It had a finger (it’s the only word I can think of to describe it) of extra copper running out off the flan! Mine has a weakly struck wing, and a corrospondingly rough reverse area. Not to mention the flan is too small to fit the design. I am very happy with it.
Usually if a coin is overstruck, the original planchet would be of a coin with an older design where it would no longer be suitable for circulation. While most overstruck coins are common, some are scarce to unique. A couple of examples that I own have not appear in the market for more than a decade.
