5 Roubles, Russian Empire, series 1909
Государственный кредитный билетъ — Пять рублей
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00005
- Serial
- УБ 482
- Series year
- 1909
- Actually issued
- 1912–1917
- manager
- I. P. Shipov (И. Шиповъ) certain
- cashier
- Ovchinnikov (Овчинниковъ) probable
Read at 600 dpi.
- Grade
- VF (IBNS)
Bright, light handling. Estimated from the archival scan. Folds, soiling and edge condition are visible at this resolution; paper crispness, pinholes, small repairs and pressing are not.
- Estimated value
- $6 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-07.
- Dimensions
- 98.4 × 157.1 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- GuillocheSmall denominationGold standardImperial collapse
The type
- Type
- 5 Roubles, Russian Empire, series 1909
- Printer
- Expedition for the Preparation of State Papers (EZGB), St Petersburg / Petrograd
- Rarity
- very common
Inscriptions
Государственный банкъ размѣниваетъ кредитные билеты на золотую монету безъ ограниченія суммы (1 рубль = 1/15 имперіала, содержитъ 17,424 долей чистаго золота)
The State Bank exchanges credit notes for gold coin without limit of sum (1 rouble = 1/15 imperial, containing 17.424 dolya of pure gold)
Symbology
- Double-headed eagle, crowned
- The Romanov arms in full: two crowned heads under a third imperial crown, holding orb and sceptre, with St George slaying the dragon on the breast shield. The two heads face east and west - a claim, inherited from Byzantium, to authority over both.
- Guilloche
- The dense interlaced line-work filling the field. Engine-turned on a geometric lathe, it was the era's principal anti-counterfeiting device: reproducible only with the same machine and impossible to draw freehand or photograph cleanly.
- Gold-standard wording in an ornamental cartouche
- The redemption promise is given its own decorative frame rather than being set as small print. On a note designed to advertise convertibility, the promise is the ornament.
What was happening
The five-rouble note is where the empire's monetary promise met ordinary life. Larger denominations were stores of value; this was a week's wages for a skilled worker, and it was printed accordingly — in quantities that make it one of the most common surviving Russian imperial notes today.
Its design carries the same gold clause as the great 50- and 100-rouble notes, in the same confident phrasing, and it was equally void from July 1914 onward. What changed after that date was not the wording but the volume: the State Bank financed the war by running the presses, and the small denominations bore the brunt of it. Notes of this series printed in 1915 and 1916 bought a fraction of what the identical note bought in 1912.
These carry series designations — "УБ-477" — rather than individual serial numbers, a printing economy that itself says something about the scale of issue.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 5 Roubles, Russian Empire, series 1909 in the collection.
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