[2] The Hermitage also possesses the three genuine sets of press dies, in different stages of completion, seventeen tin work-in-progress samples and Jacob Reichel's original design on parchment.
[4] Pure silver content of the coin is prominently written on the reverse as 4 and 21/96 zolotniks; hallmark is pressed on the edge, in Cyrillic.
Constantine rubles, on the contrary, were literally hand made on simple manually operated presses from blanks with pre-pressed edge lettering.
Grand Duke Constantine, second son of Paul I, was heir presumptive to his reigning brother Alexander, who had no legitimate issue, until 1823.
November 27] 1825, Nicholas duly pledged allegiance to Constantine before Alexander Golitsyn, one of three persons entrusted with keeping the secret, could reach the Winter Palace.
Council members, now facing an unprecedented dynastic crisis, were unprepared to act as state authority and left the outcome to Nicholas, who reiterated his allegiance to Emperor Constantine.
Minister of Finance Georg von Cancrin was present at the State Council meeting of December 9, and thus aware of the unfolding dynastic crisis.
On the same day he also instructed Saint Peterburg Mint to press an additional run of the medal that was struck in 1779 on the occasion of Constantine's birth.
Tradition held it that the Constantine ruble presses were designed and carved by Jacob Reichel (obverse) and Vladimir Alekseyev (reverse).
[15] According to studies by Bartoshevich and Valentin Yanin, there were six Constantine rubles with proper edge lettering, and one of them was lost without trace.
[18] In 1866 Bernhard Karl von Koehne published his account of the coin's history; according to Koene, the whole affair was Reichel's private venture.
Reichel, wrote Koehne, sent three coins to Warsaw and all three disappeared when Constantine's palace was looted during the November Uprising.
According to Trubetskoy, all five test samples were sent to Warsaw and ended up in the hands of an anonymous Polish plunderer who later emigrated to France.
Yanin theorized that Bychkov could have inherited from Cancrin the hypothetical sixth Constantine ruble, and that it was resold in Europe in 1898.
According to Kobeko, the Ministry still possessed five silver Constantine rubles, three sets of press dies and nineteen tin samples.
The public also remained unaware that a few months earlier, in 1879, Alexander II of Russia removed five genuine Constantine rubles from the vault.
[21] Their story was declassified in an 1886 publication by Grand Duke Georgy Mikhailovich, who owned one of genuine Constantine rubles.
[15] Two coins with edge relief are still in Russia, at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and the State Historical Museum in Moscow.
Speckles of rust on the Hermitage dies, according to Kalinin, forever rule out their use (or abuse) for cloning the Constantine ruble.