Denga - Vasiliy III Tver

Vasily III absorbed Tver into the Muscovite state in 1485 — twenty years before this coin's earliest possible date — yet Tver retained a functioning mint issuing coins under his name well into the sixteenth century, a deliberate concession to regional monetary habit rather than any political autonomy. The tiny wire-cut denga, produced by cutting flattened rod stock rather than striking blanks, is characteristic of Russian coinage before Peter I's reforms imposed Western minting methods.

Zaitsev's classification isolates this type among a crowded field of near-identical Tver issues where attribution depends almost entirely on minute die characteristics.