The hammer throw gave the USSR one of its loudest triumphs at the Moscow Olympics: on 31 July 1980 Yuriy Sedykh threw 81.80 metres for a world record, and Soviet athletes filled the entire podium.

The five-rouble coin with a hammer thrower came out a year earlier, in 1979. The reverse shows the athlete with the hammer in front of a stadium and the Games emblem, encircled by «ИГРЫ XXII ОЛИМПИАДЫ · МОСКВА · 1980» (Games of the XXII Olympiad, Moscow, 1980), with 1979 and the mint letters «ЛМД». The obverse carries the Soviet state emblem, «СССР» (USSR) and «5 РУБЛЕЙ» (5 roubles).

The Leningrad and Moscow mints struck the coin in exactly equal shares: 103,539 standard pieces and 53,964 proofs each. This example is a Leningrad strike.

Uncirculated grade: the coin has never circulated, shows no wear and keeps its mint lustre. For collectors of athletics on coins it is a design tied to a world record, and for the Olympic series a 1979 piece.

A coin in a collection is a reason to learn more about history, and the VPcoins catalogue offers many such reasons.