Kopeck - Boris Godunov

Boris Godunov's accession in 1598 was genuinely contested — he was the first tsar elected by a zemsky sobor, an assembly of estates, rather than inheriting by dynastic right. His wire-money kopecks were struck using the same hand-hammered flan technique unchanged since Ivan the Terrible's monetary reform of 1535, each coin individually cut from drawn silver wire and struck between two dies. The resulting irregular shapes are inherent to the production method, not damage.

Godunov died in April 1605 as Polish-backed forces supporting the pretender False Dmitry I were already advancing on Moscow.