In the reign of Peter the Great the spoiling of money became one of the principal sources of state revenue
With the introduction of paper money, specialists in counterfeiting it also appeared. The first banknotes were issued in Russia under Catherine 11 in 1769. Two years later the empress s decree mentioned that counterfeit 75-ruble banknotes were deposited at the St Petersburg Bank, made cut off genuine 25-ruble banknotes. This led to the dropping of 75-ruble banknotes for good.
In the decade between 1787 and 1797, counterfeit banknotes to the value of 170,000 rubles were withdrawn from circulation throughout the Russian empire.
The late 18 th and early 19 th centuries saw the rise of counterfeiting money of certain states by hostile countries intent on undermining their economy. Thus the English counterfeited the
Banknotes of revolutionary France and napoleondores, while Emperor Napoleon issued masses of Austrian, Prussian and English paper money.
On the eve of Napoleon s invasion of Russia in 1812 counterfeiting of 25, 50 and 100 ruble banknotes was started in Paris. The banknotes were rather skillfully made, with all the necessary stamping and watermarks.
Dozens of million rubles worth of counterfeit money was brought to Russia by Napoleon s army. In 1813, the Russian government circulated secret orders describing the special features of counterfeit banknotes, which were then exchanged for genuine money and destroyed. The process went on for more than ten years. The country sustained considerable losses. In 1820 alone some seven million rubles were paid for the counterfeit banknotes withdrawn from circulation. To compare: only five million rubles were spent on rebuilding Moscow burned down in 1812.
In the 19 th and 20 th centuries counterfeiting was fairly widespread in Russia. The government fought this evil by sentencing the culprits to hard labor and continually improving the safeguards against counterfeiting.
Spoiling the money by state mints gradually disappeared with the introduction of paper money on a mass scale. The state now achieves the same result by printing more and more money and throwing it onto the market, whereupon great efforts have to be made to curb inflation and rocketing prices.
A special category of counterfeit money comprises the so called “collector s forgeries”.
These appeared much later than counterfeit money as such. In 16 th century Padua, Italy, especially made stamps were used to forge counterfeit ancient coins, often only vaguely reminiscent of the originals.
Since then, this craft has become fairly widespread, inundating the world with “antique” and “medieval” coins, as well as coins from another epochs, including Russian counterfeit rarities like fifty-kopeck pieces from the times of Czar Aleksei Mikhailovich, the copper rectangles from the years 1725-1727, and others.