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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Juan Blanco, post: 1575120, member: 41665&quot;]lonegunlawyer-</p><p>LOL I&#039;m <i>rabidly </i>obsessed with Platinum, sorry. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m especially fascinated by those fake Platinum Roubles that pop up rather often and may be contemporary fabrications from the 1830s. Michael Faraday and others denied this scenario, but the Russian government was utterly convinced British merchants were <i>smuggling in Colombian metal</i> in some wild arbitrage scheme. This has to be one of the wackiest counterfeits/conceits imaginable: free-market Platinum substituted for state monopoly Platinum, smuggled thousands of milles, from the jungle of South America to the Mint in St. Petersburg... and all back in 1830-40!</p><p><br /></p><p>As Heraeus &amp; Johnson &amp; Matthey have recently spectro-analyzed their &quot;vintage examples&quot; and found <u>higher-quality</u> fakes, the Russian Finance Minister&#039;s paranoia might be justified. </p><p>So far as I can tell, no (other) scholar has elaborated this theory. I believe it&#039;s a fascinating subject that warrants a Phd.</p><p><a href="http://noblemetals.blogspot.com/2010/05/russia-rouble-forgeries-may-reveal-mid.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://noblemetals.blogspot.com/2010/05/russia-rouble-forgeries-may-reveal-mid.html" rel="nofollow">http://noblemetals.blogspot.com/2010/05/russia-rouble-forgeries-may-reveal-mid.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://noblemetals.blogspot.com/2011/07/russia-1830.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://noblemetals.blogspot.com/2011/07/russia-1830.html" rel="nofollow">http://noblemetals.blogspot.com/2011/07/russia-1830.html</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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