I was scanning eBay and found this coin. I have no idea what it is but it looks interesting - anybody have a clue? (No, it's not my auction) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3953838304 Thanks! jello_g
Yup, saw that after I posted here. For sure I thought it was British of some sort. I hardly know foreign since I collect mainly Canada so I was easily stumped!
It's 1 Kopek from the Russian Empire, Elisabeth (1741-61) epoch. Made of Copper, but i haven't idea about its value.
C#6.1, 4g copper, produced at the Ekaterinburg and Moscow mints, without mintmarks or other identification. Krause doesn't say, but my guess is that it's hammered. The 1861 pictured in the 18th Century Krause 3rd ed. is also off center, but not as much as this example. Based on Krause's picture, there is a lot of detail worn off, so I'd call it only VG ~$12. There were 23,848,000 1760s, and only about 15-million total from 1757-59. (No mintage shown for 1761.) OT historical note - my mother was born in a city named for Empress Elizabeth. Edited due to careless lookup. I took another look at the Q&A and the seller gives the size as 13/16". The kopek is ~27.5mm, but the 1 denga (= 1/2 kopek) is ~21.5mm, so the coin in question is C#5, 6.4g, and with much, much smaller mintage numbers. 1759-60 were a combined 1,574,000, and another 3.75-million were turned out in 1757-1758. The catalog value is somewhat higher than for the kopek. The same design was also used for the 2 kopek (~32.5mm).
There is no way to tell that the Czarist Russian coin is a hammered piece.I have seen coins from the reign of Czar Peter the Great that are definitely not hammered coins.They would have been struck by an early machine - steam-powered,of course.
