25 Roubles Russian Ballet

The 1989 Soviet palladium bullion program was one of the more unusual hard-currency maneuvers of the late Gorbachev period — the USSR held enormous palladium reserves from the Norilsk mining complex, and issuing collector coins denominated in roubles was a method of marketing that metal to Western buyers without going through conventional commodity channels. Palladium was still exotic enough in numismatic terms that the series attracted genuine international demand.

The Ballet issue was the first in the series. Soviet palladium coins from this window are now historically anomalous — struck by a state that ceased to exist two years later.