10 Roubles Russian Ballet

The Soviet palladium ballet series, launched in 1988, was among the first government-issued palladium bullion coinage in the world — a direct response to South Africa's near-monopoly on platinum-group metal coins and a calculated attempt to develop a secondary market for Soviet palladium production, which at the time rivaled South Africa's own output. The USSR was dumping the metal strategically, and these coins were part of a broader commodities play dressed up in cultural prestige.

By 1990, the program was operating against a collapsing state economy, making these late issues among the last coherent numismatic projects the Soviet mint would complete before dissolution.