I`ve got some serious doubts regarding the authenticity of this set covers and possibly the coins inside. I think the cover was not manufactured in Russia and/or in 1992. I got no way to know if the coins are authentic, they might be, but a few things in the cover just does not look right. Could anyone tell if this is an official mint set, or private set? Does anyone own it or know any additional information about this set?
Here are a few things that can not appear on a set made in Russia (or made by someone who knows Russian language): *On front cover, there is no use of capital letters in Russian line on the left. In English line on the right, there is a proper use of capital letters. * Under the coins there is a print with coin denomination. It got massive grammatical mistake. It is a bit hard to explain since in English the plural of "rouble" is always the same, "roubles". In Russian, "1 rouble" and "5 rouble" sounds and written differently. Nobody who knows Russian would make such a mistake, maybe if its a 3 years old. * Token in the middle seems like an official mint token, but it says "Moscow and Saint Petersburg Mints". Usually the token should state "Moscow Mint" OR "Saint Petersburg Mint". * One word on a token using English letter Y, while it should be Russian version of letter U. They look a bit the same, but its the wrong way to write it. It is hard to imagine that something like this would be struck on Russian coin set token. * Token says "Coins In Circulation" with a wrong letter in Russian "In". There should be Russian "V" while there is actually Russian "B". Even 3 years old won't put it this way. With all these basic mistakes I got the feeling it was made in China. There is no way to be sure the coins are genuine unless they are weighed, IMHO.
Do you own this set and somehow verified the coins (or found out they`re genuine by some other way) or did you just look at the image and decided they`re authentic because they look authentic to you?
I have most of these coins (beside 50 & 100 roubles). And I'm sure on a 100% that all of these coins are genuine.
It may very well be a privately put together set, but they wanted to make it look like an official set to sell it for more money. We see privately put together mint sets all the time, but usually they do not try to mimic the official sets. The coins do look genuine, especially the bimetallic ones that are much harder to counterfeit and probably not worth counterfeiting for a set like this.
As far as I am aware, this is another variation for packaging. What should be noted is that this features coins from both Moscow and Leningrad mints. Most likely reason is that Moscow mint's 50 and 100 ruble coins are already quite scarce to start off with. Moscow mint 1992 officially does not exist. I believe the mint token in this packaging mention that it features coins from both mints. The most common are coins in soft plastic sheet followed by this packaging. The most uncommon out of all 1992 mint sets are coins issued in hard plastic cases. As far jumping to conclusion that this is made in China, I would like to know how you come up with that. Trolling is not acceptable.
I agree that no Russian would make the kind of mistakes that you pointed out, especially the use of "Ruble" in the singular instead of plural. It's like an old joke about a person from a non-Russian Soviet republic going into a bakery and asking for "odin kofe i odin bulochka"... On the other hand, the detailed description on the jacket (middle photo) is written with proper Russian grammar, using complex constructions that a person from China would have never figured out. Perhaps part of it was photocopied from a genuine set? In any case there is no way that it was packaged in Russia. The coins are probably genuine though because they aren't high value enough to justify counterfeiting.
I think we are dismissing the importance of the mint token. If I am not mistaken, this looks the same and struck on a similar type based on the earlier Soviet mint token which can be found in earlier Soviet mint sets. This here is an example As for the mistakes - I am well aware of the grammar mistake. However if you look at the quality of mint sets issued from 1960s - it just seems the care factor is not there.
I studied in Moscow in '93. I remember a shortage of the 50 ruble coins (worth 5 cents at the time) and sometimes receiving a stick of gum in change instead, or 5 Soviet 10 ruble notes. The 100 ruble coins were nowhere to be seen as there were paper notes in that denomination. Most memorable were the Soviet 15 Kopek coins which were worthless but still required for pay phones, so they had to be bought in kiosks at a premium.
In 1991 it was 2 kopeks to place a call, I remember how scarce 2 kopek coins were and "hoarded" them as a result. By then though the ruble was descending into freefall in value, but still you had to have small denominations to buy necessities like phone calls, postage stamps etc and much larger denominations for food, clothes etc.
I think what is intriguing would be the amount of different types of coins in circulation during the Soviet era. Take a step back and recall what was available. 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 kopek and 1 ruble. and then you had commemorative 1 ruble, 3 ruble, 5 ruble. Let's not include the last type of soviet coins issued in 1991. So there are effectively 9 different coins and another 3. This I believe is almost double of what many countries have coins for circulation! Whether all types of coins did circulate - that is another question. Even Russia has only 6 different coins in circulation currently. I believe there was an interesting use of 15 kopek in Latvia. Latvia telecom actually took 15 kopek coins and overstruck, modified them to suit their needs. This example that I have is modified from 1987 15 kopek. I think the 1993 coin issues are just tragic. Due to inflation, it just became too expensive to mint bimetallic coins. All coins had to be struck with plated steel to save on cost. While the original 50 coins were struck in nickel alloy, they were later struck in plated steel as well.
I can only speak from my experience in late 1993. By that time the exchange rate was over 1000 rubles to the dollar which made all of the kopek denominations obsolete. However, the last 1991 Soviet coins could still occasionally be found as well as coins from 1992 and 1993. If I remember correctly all three of those years had different compositions, so there really was a lot of variety. There was a lot of variety in banknotes as well, as the old Soviet 1, 3, 5 and 10 ruble notes circulated alongside the newer post Soviet issues. I can only speak for Moscow so I'm not sure if things were any different in other parts of the country.
