25 Roubles The European Beaver

This coin belongs to Russia's long-running wildlife conservation series, which the Bank of Russia launched in the early 1990s partly in response to Soviet-era environmental damage that had pushed several native species toward extinction. The European beaver (Castor fiber) was itself nearly wiped out across the continent by the early twentieth century — Russian populations survived largely due to a protected reserve established in the Bryansk region in 1927, which became the foundation for later reintroduction programs across Europe.

The large-format 169g issues in this series are notorious among collectors for uneven die polishing on the proof fields.