Kopeck - Mikhail I М

Mikhail Romanov's accession in 1613 ended the Time of Troubles — a decade of dynastic collapse, Polish occupation, and near-total monetary chaos. The Moscow Mint had been seized and operated by Polish-Lithuanian forces during the occupation, and restoring legitimate coinage under the new tsar was an immediate priority, both practically and politically. These wire-money kopecks were among the first coins struck in Mikhail's name, their crude flattened shape a direct inheritance of the fish-scale flan technique unchanged since Ivan the Terrible's monetary reform of 1535.