5 Roubles Owl

The "Owl" bimetallic was one of the last coin types authorized by the State Bank of the USSR before the union's dissolution — struck in 1991, the same year of the August coup attempt against Gorbachev and the formal collapse of Soviet authority. The bimetallic format itself was an innovation borrowed from Italian coinage technology, introduced partly to discourage the rampant slug-and-slug counterfeiting that had plagued Soviet vending infrastructure throughout the 1980s.

Mintage was split between the Leningrad and Moscow mints, with the Leningrad facility striking its final Soviet-issue coins that same year before the city reverted to its pre-revolutionary name.