500 Roubles, Russian Empire, series 1912

This copy

Accession

OM-00009

Serial

ВН 148134

Series year

1912

Actually issued

1912–1917

manager

I. P. Shipov (И. Шиповъ) certain

cashier

not read uncertain

Legible but not resolved to a name; compare against a signature chart.

Grade

VG (IBNS)

Scanned folded; fold splits and edge separation. Estimated from the archival scan. Folds, soiling and edge condition are visible at this resolution; paper crispness, pinholes, small repairs and pressing are not. Scanned folded — the left third is turned back over the face. Rescan flat before grading.

Estimated value

$14 indicative

Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-07.

Dimensions

at least 268.6 × 129.9 mm (±5.5, from the scan)

The note is folded and runs to the edge of the scan, so this is a floor, not a measurement. A flat rescan with a margin would settle it.

Themes

Monarch portraitGold standardImperial collapseHigh denomination

The type

Type

500 Roubles, Russian Empire, series 1912

Portrait

Peter I (r. 1682–1725)

Printer

Expedition for the Preparation of State Papers (EZGB), St Petersburg / Petrograd

Watermark

Portrait of Peter I

Rarity

common

Inscriptions

Obverse — the gold promise

Государственный банкъ размѣниваетъ кредитные билеты на золотую монету безъ ограниченія суммы (1 р. = 1/15 имперіала, содержитъ 17,424 доли 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)

Reverse — the counterfeiting penalty

За подделку кредитныхъ билетовъ виновные подвергаются лишенію всѣхъ правъ состоянія и ссылкѣ въ каторжную работу

Counterfeiters are subject to deprivation of all rights of estate and exile to penal labour

Symbology

Portrait of Peter I

The 'Petenka'. The empire quoting its own founding myth on its largest note, two years before the war that destroyed it.

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

Peter I on the 500 is the empire quoting its own founding myth at the moment it was about to end. The note appeared in 1912, in the last stretch of confident peacetime finance, and it is the physical high-water mark of Russian banknote design: enormous, densely engraved, with a portrait watermark that still defeats casual reproduction.

Its size is also its curse as a collectable. At roughly 27 centimetres across, nobody carried one flat. Almost every surviving example was folded — often in halves and then quarters — and the fold lines are where the paper failed first.

During the Civil War these were among the "Romanov" notes that both sides tolerated and the public actively preferred, trading at a premium over Soviet and White paper alike. A note promising 500 gold roubles from a state that no longer existed was, for a while, better money than anything currently being issued.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 500 Roubles, Russian Empire, series 1912 in the collection.