Rouble - Nicholas II Battle of Gangut

Issued to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Gangut — Russia's first significant naval victory, fought in 1714 against Sweden during the Great Northern War — this rouble was one of the last commemorative issues struck before the First World War effectively ended normal coin production. Nicholas II authorized several such anniversary roubles in the years preceding the war, but Gangut holds a particular irony: a celebration of naval supremacy commissioned by a tsar whose fleet had been catastrophically destroyed at Tsushima less than a decade earlier.

Mintage was limited to approximately 30,000 pieces, most distributed through court channels rather than general circulation.