2 Roubles Gjursa

Part of Russia's long-running "Red Book" endangered species series, this issue commemorates the Gjursa — the Caucasian subspecies of the brown bear — at a time when conservation politics between Russia and Georgia over the Caucasus region were still fraught. The Bank of Russia has issued hundreds of these small silver pieces since the 1990s, making them prolific in secondary markets but genuinely useful as a documentary record of which species the Russian government considered worth protecting in any given year.