Mikhail Fyodorovich, the first Romanov tsar, inherited a monetary system barely recovered from the Time of Troubles — a decade and a half of civil war, famine, and foreign occupation that had gutted mint production and flooded circulation with clipped and counterfeit wire coins. These hand-struck wire kopecks, produced by the Moscow mint during the final decade of Mikhail's reign, were cut from drawn silver rod and struck between dies in a method essentially unchanged since Ivan the Terrible. The o/M mintmark distinguishes Moscow output from concurrent issues at Novgorod and Pskov.
Mikhail Fyodorovich, the first Romanov tsar, inherited a monetary system barely recovered from the Time of Troubles — a decade and a half of civil war, famine, and foreign occupation that had gutted mint production and flooded circulation with clipped and counterfeit wire coins. These hand-struck wire kopecks, produced by the Moscow mint during the final decade of Mikhail's reign, were cut from drawn silver rod and struck between dies in a method essentially unchanged since Ivan the Terrible. The o/M mintmark distinguishes Moscow output from concurrent issues at Novgorod and Pskov.