Kopeck - Alexey Mikhailovich о М

Alexei Mikhailovich inherited a treasury strained by the Smolensk War and then immediately faced the Thirteen Years' War against Poland-Lithuania beginning in 1654. Wire-cut kopecks of this period were produced by the most primitive method in European coinage — silver wire hammered between crude dies — a technique Russia had not abandoned since the fifteenth century. The Moscow, Novgorod, and Pskov mints all struck simultaneously during these years, and attribution to a specific facility depends entirely on the mintmaster's initials buried in the die inscription.