Two of the rarest modern commemorative Russian coins at the moment are: bimetallic 10 rubles of 2010 the Chechen republic and 10 rubles of 2010 the Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Area. Wonder why? Their mintage is only 100.000 pieces which is really little comparing to the other commemorative 10 rubles, whoose mintage is 5.000.000 - 10.000.000 pcs..

10 rubles Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Area coin is more expensive because after it was minted it has gotten more spread in circulation than the Chechen coin. But wait, you will probably think that if the coin was found in circulation, it would be easier to get it therefore it should be cheaper, right? Don’t be tricked by that! The thing is the circulating coins tend to get lost and “dissolved” in open spaces of our homeland. The part of them will not get in any collections, and will probably just get damaged due to handing from place to place as a means of payment, or lay somewhere in the ground, in a garbage can, in a piggy bank or just somewhere else … it means that actually the part of the coin circulation will be just simply destroyed and vanished. Meanwhile the coins of 10 rubles the Chechen republic have been generally sold from banks to coin dealers and collectors, and were almost not included in regular circulation. Therefore from mintage of 100.000 Chechen coins has remained more, than Yamalo-Nenetsky coins which explains the higher price of the last one mentioned.

And by the way the famous rare rubles of 2003 have the same story. Allegedly with the mintage of 15.000 pieces they all got in circulation. However for some reason 1 ruble of 2003 is more expensive than 2 and 5 rubles. My theory is that the coin of 1 ruble is easier to lose due to its smaller size and value. It was lost more often and as a result less of them reached the numismatic market. On the moment of writing this article the 1 ruble of 2003 costs 30.000 rubles and 2 rubles and 5 rubles of 2003 cost 15.000 rubles.

Article is written on 26.10.2014, when using quotes from the article, please put a reference to the source (coinss.com)