1 Kopeck - Nikolai I

These kopecks were produced at the Ekaterinburg mint during the final years of Nicholas I's reign, a period when Russia was being drawn toward the catastrophic Crimean War of 1853–1856. Wartime monetary pressure would soon strain copper coinage circulation severely, making issues from the early 1850s transitional in a very practical sense — struck under one fiscal reality, spent under another.