25 Roubles, 1918, American Bank Note Company issue

Государственный кредитный билетъ — Двадцать пять рублей

Reverse of 25 Roubles, 1918, American Bank Note Company issue — Reverse 600 dpi

This copy

Accession: OM-00022
Serial: ВБ 536013
Series year: 1918
Actually issued: 1918–1920
Signatures: This issue carries no bank manager or cashier signature.
Grade: VF (IBNS)
Black cancellation bars; otherwise sound. Estimated from the archival scan. Folds, soiling and edge condition are visible at this resolution; paper crispness, pinholes, small repairs and pressing are not. The engraved Управляющий and Кассиръ labels were never filled in: this printing left New York unsigned and circulated so.
Estimated value: $9 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-07.
Dimensions: 148.2 × 86.8 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
Themes: Russian Civil War American Bank Note Company Allegorical figure Far East

The type

Type: 25 Roubles, 1918, American Bank Note Company issue
Printer: American Bank Note Company, New York
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

Подделка кредитныхъ билетовъ преслѣдуется закономъ

Counterfeiting of credit notes is prosecuted by law

Symbology

American engraving: Seated allegorical figures of Industry and Plenty, steel-engraved vignettes, hard colour - the visual language of US banknotes and share certificates. Ordered from the American Bank Note Company by a government that had fallen before delivery.
Double-headed eagle, crownless: The same eagle with the crowns, orb and sceptre stripped off - redrawn for the Provisional Government in 1917 by Ivan Bilibin, and nicknamed the 'chicken' for its plucked look. It is a state trying to stay continuous with what came before while disowning the part everyone objected to. The Soviets kept it unchanged for years afterwards.
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.

What was happening

A seated allegorical figure of Industry against a harbour and a city. These notes were ordered from the American Bank Note Company in New York by the Russian Provisional Government in 1917 — a government that had ceased to exist long before the printing was delivered.

The workmanship is unmistakably American: the seated allegorical figures, the steel-engraved vignettes of industry and harvest, the sharp intaglio and hard colour are the visual language of US banknotes and share certificates of the period, not of the Petrograd Expedition. Nothing else in Russian paper money looks like them.

Shipped to Vladivostok, they were issued from 1918 onward in Siberia and the Far East by whichever administration held the ports and the railway — the Provisional Siberian Government, then Kolchak's Omsk regime, then the Far Eastern authorities. They still carry the imperial gold clause, which by then was a printed fiction.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Roubles, 1918, American Bank Note Company issue in the collection.

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