Kopeck - Alexey Mikhailovich о М

Alexei Mikhailovich inherited the throne at sixteen in 1645, and these wire money kopecks — chekanka's characteristic fish-scale flans — were struck by hammer dies on hand-cut silver rod, a technique essentially unchanged since Ivan the Terrible's monetary reform of 1535. The Moscow mint mark М places production at the principal facility during the early years of his reign, before the catastrophic 1654–1663 monetary reform that attempted to introduce copper kopecks at silver face value and triggered the Copper Riot of 1662.