10 Roubles - Alexander III

These gold imperials funded the final push of Russian railway expansion under Alexander III, whose reign saw the Trans-Siberian line authorized in 1891 — a project so capital-intensive it strained Imperial treasury reserves for a generation. The coins were struck under tight supervision at Saint Petersburg following the monetary reforms that stabilized the rouble against western European gold standards, a priority Alexander pursued partly to secure French loan agreements that would eventually underpin the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894.

Fr#167 is well-documented in Friedberg with relatively consistent mintage across the emission years, though 1894 pieces are notably scarcer — Alexander died in November of that year.