5 Kopecks - Peter I

Peter I's copper and billon small denominations from this period were part of a sweeping monetary reform begun in 1701, designed to replace the archaic wire "fish scale" kopecks that had served Russia since the medieval period. The transition was administratively chaotic — old and new coinage circulated simultaneously for years, and public resistance to the debased new issues was widespread enough that counterfeiting became a serious enforcement problem by 1713.

The billon alloy used here sits notably below the silver content of contemporaneous Western European petty coinage, a deliberate fiscal decision by the reforming tsar to maximize seigniorage while funding the ongoing Northern War against Sweden.