Yet Another Forum Game - Numismatic Go Fish!

...A few weeks ago it would've been trivial to decide. Now there's actually another promising candidate, though I think the coin I'm posting is still uglier.

It helps that I'm not really into sets...



Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (the USSR wasn't officially declared yet)
1 ruble, 1922 (I think), don't recall the variety offhand

This is by far the rarest type of the entire USSR circulating coin series (other than the patterns and the gold, anyway). Yes, even if we include the (base-metal) commemoratives.
I was seriously wondering if I'm going to do that type set at all, because that type was going to be a stopper. Then I stumbled on this example for the unexpectedly low price of $30.

(When I bought it, I asked something like four or five different dealers as to whether it's real, and all of them said it's probably real, just in ludicrously bad shape.
In hand, remnants of the edge lettering are clearly, if faintly, visible between the protrusions of the beaten-down rim. I was able to read enough to attribute the variety.)

I still need to get the 1924 silver ruble (but it's a lot more common, and thus a lot cheaper), a few of the later base-metal types (not sure which ones offhand), and of course a load of commemoratives (if I'm going in that direction).
But the big stopper is there; getting everything else will require some patience and careful checklist work, but (per purchase, at least) nowhere near as much money.


EDIT: forgot to mention (couldn't find a good place to insert it), but 1922 is the less common date for the (already very scarce) type, which is actually kind of neat.

Well, yes, which is why I was surprised that it was being sold that cheaply. But it's still ugly.

The problem is that I don't really do sets, and when I do, they usually consist of modern coins that don't show up in ugly grades often in the first place. (I think there might be one Mongolian example?)
I have loads of other ugly coins that I'm proud to own - the Sabbioneta sesino with Saint Nicholas comes to mind, for example. But most of them were bought as neat-looking coins to be attributed, not as hole fillers for sets.

The other big contender is this Draped Bust large cent, which is a literal hole filler (for my 7070). I suppose my Otacilia Severa most-of-an-antoninianus (not photographed yet) might also qualify.

Good contest. I don't really have any ugly coins per se - all coins I have, have got some beauty at least.

But I guess for the sake of completeness and dropping my standards, there is little to love about this and if it was not 1905 - 90% of us would not look twice at this.

1794 cent




Picked up out of a junk box. Last digit effaced.

I'll also vote for january1may

True! [EDIT: it's "he", by the way.]

I'm hardly going to vote for myself, obviously, so I'm voting for @Arkie and their 1794 cent.
(Still hope to get that type some day - even if there's no 7070 hole for it...)

My vote is for January.

His ruble reminds me of a set I bought at the LCS a decade or so ago. It was presented as coins Stalin would kill you for owning or some such. Fractional rubles -- last imperial, RFSFR, and first soviet. I bought it for like $8, sold it at a consignment store for $50, but I sure wish I had known of this site when I owned it.