Jefimok Rouble - Alexey Mikhailovich Countermarked over 'Mansfeld-Friedeburg Taler 1603'

The jefimok program of 1655 was a fiscal emergency measure. Russia lacked the silver stocks and technical capacity to strike full-weight roubles domestically, so Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich's government bought up foreign thalers in bulk and applied two counterstamps — a horseman punch and a date punch reading 1655 — to monetize them at 64 kopecks each. The Mansfeld-Friedeburg taler of 1603, struck over half a century before its Russian conversion, had by then traveled far enough through European trade networks to end up in Muscovite hands.

The program was abandoned the same year it launched, making the entire jefimok issue a single-year experiment.