This coin has sparked an interest when I first saw it. While Swedish counterfeits of such 5 kopek are known and are quite rare, this brings counterfeit to a new level. Presenting a copper plated lead 5 kopek. Yes, this is copper plated lead. If you ask me, an original coin of 1796 AM 5 kopek is not terribly rare. Details are relatively good despite it's condition. While 5 kopek coins were common back then, this was still worth a fair amount of money. Therefore I believe this is a contemporary counterfeit that circulated back then. I could be wrong and this may be part of a more modern counterfeit. What do you reckon?
Quite peculiar. Couldn't find any information about this on Russian numismatic resources. Got to be contemporary, nowadays its not that hard to obtain any copper-colored metals alloy to produce fakes (see China). Hard to believe someone today would care that much about copper to make them lead and then go through the hassle of plating.
Details wise, this actually looks very good. I have taken some photos to compare against. I just happened to have the same type and mint by coincedence even though I am not a big fan of this type of coinage. You can see where the plating clearly Edge of the traces of copper Couldn't take a good photo of the lead side however it's almost smooth The weight of this coin is at 53.80g which is actually within tolerance level of this type of coin. I cannot help wondering if this was actually struck at the mint considering how good the detail is. But again, I don't know of any lead examples. On the other hand, I wonder how easy it was to get lead in such planchet and then copper plate it to make some money out of it.
