50 Roubles N. V. Gogol

Issued to mark the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth, this piece appeared during a period when the Bank of Russia was producing commemorative gold at a pace that significantly outstripped collector demand — a pattern that has kept secondary-market premiums on many such issues modest despite the fine gold content. Gogol himself died in Moscow in 1852 under circumstances that remain disputed: a combination of prolonged fasting, possible misdiagnosis, and aggressive medical treatment, with some historians suspecting typhoid and others a psychiatric collapse following his burning of the second volume of *Dead Souls*.