Postby blakstone » Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:37 am
Actually, neither of the 3’s are numerals; in both cases they’re Cyrillic letters.
In the post-1958 Soviet “hammer & sickle” mark, it’s the Russian “hard E”: first letter in the Russian word for Estonia, and consequently the mark of the assay office in its capital, Tallinn.
In the “T30” mark, it’s the letter “Ze”, first letter in the Russian word for “factory”, with “T3” being the mark of the Tallinn Gold & Silverware Factory. (More or less — Soviet-era manufacturers’ names are woefully uninspired.) The “0” is a numeral, though, here indicating the year 1960.
So Baltic, yes; but Estonian, not Latvian. Nice Cold War souvenir!
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