Catalog
25 Silver Roubles
| Issuer | Expedition of Procurement of State Papers (Экспедиция заготовления государственных бумаг) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1840 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Rouble (1700-1917) |
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| Obverse description | Printed in black on white paper using letterpress, the note bears a crowned imperial double-headed eagle vignette at the upper centre. Denomination and issuing authority text in Cyrillic script occupy the body of the note, framed by a decorative typographic border. Three signature lines appear below the main text, the first typographically printed and the remaining two completed in manuscript. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The plain reverse, characteristic of early Russian state credit notes of the period, carries the denomination in Cyrillic script within a typographic decorative border, without a central vignette. |
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| Comments |
The 1840 deposit note (депозитный билет) series was introduced under Finance Minister Yegor Kankrin as part of his monetary reform, which attempted to anchor Russian paper currency to a silver standard — hence "silver roubles" rather than the assignat roubles that had been depreciating for decades. These notes were theoretically backed one-for-one by silver held in the State Deposit Bank, a claim the government struggled to honor as demand grew.
The Expedition, Russia's own state security printing works founded in 1818, produced the entire series domestically — one of the few instances where St. Petersburg could genuinely claim both design and manufacture without outsourcing to Western European specialist printers.