10 Roubles

The 1895 series marks a transitional moment in Russian state banking: these notes were issued under the gold standard reform program championed by Finance Minister Sergei Witte, who was actively reorienting the ruble toward full convertibility — achieved formally in 1897. Notes from this period circulated alongside the older credit ruble system while the peg was being established, creating a brief overlap that makes precise attribution of individual examples tricky.

The embossed seal on this series was a deliberate anti-counterfeiting measure introduced after a well-documented wave of forgeries in the late 1880s had embarrassed the State Bank.