2 Roubles N. A. Nekrasov

Nikolai Nekrasov died in 1878, but his rehabilitation under Soviet rule was thorough — his unflinching verse about peasant suffering made him ideologically convenient in ways that Pushkin and Tolstoy were not. This Bank of Russia commemorative was issued on the 200th anniversary of his birth, part of a long-running silver series honoring Russian literary figures that has run with little interruption since the 1990s.

The series uses a consistent 17g/.925 format across dozens of issues, which keeps secondary-market premiums modest on the more common subjects.