Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
25 Roubles Black Sea Railroad
| Issuer | Black Sea Railroad (Черноморская Железная Дорога) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Local banknote |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Central vignette of an anchor, axe, hammer, and compass at left, set against a guilloche underprint background. The denomination 25 appears in large numerals at upper left and upper right, with the Russian text ДВАДЦАТЬ ПЯТЬ РУБЛЕЙ (Twenty-Five Roubles) across the centre. Inscriptions state the bond is issued on the basis of a decree dated 10 April 1918, with multiple manuscript signatures of issuing officials at lower right and the serial number below centre. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Plain paper with a fine guilloche border frame enclosing three numbered paragraphs of text in Cyrillic script, setting out the conditions of acceptance and redemption of the bond at the cashier's office of the Black Sea Railroad Administration in exchange for credit notes, with a reference to the resolution of the Revolutionary Non-Party Committee of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies of 11 April 1918. A small printed number appears at lower right. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
The Black Sea Railroad operated in the Caucasus region and, like dozens of other regional enterprises and municipalities during the chaos of 1918, resorted to issuing its own scrip when Kerensky-era banknotes became scarce and the Bolshevik takeover shattered normal currency supply channels. These emergency transport company notes — known collectively as bony — were technically obligations against future redemption rather than conventional banknotes, a legal fiction that gave issuers plausible cover.
Survival rates for regional Russian Civil War scrip vary wildly; many issues were repudiated outright and bulk quantities were never redeemed, yet others disappeared entirely through destruction. The Black Sea Railroad series sits somewhere in between — not genuinely rare, but not common in collectible condition either, as the paper quality used by provincial issuers in this period was rarely archival grade.