Kopeck - Mikhail I o/M

Wire money struck under Mikhail Fyodorovich, the first Romanov tsar, at a period when Russia's coin production was still entirely hand-hammered from drawn silver wire — a technique essentially unchanged since Ivan the Terrible's monetary reform of 1535. The Moscow Mint during this reign operated under chronic silver shortages, relying almost entirely on foreign Joachimsthaler and other imported bullion cut down and re-struck. Each piece is irregular by nature, the flan shaped by whatever length of wire the moneyer had to hand.

The "o/M" countermark distinguishes Moscow production from concurrent Novgorod and Pskov output — a detail that matters considerably for attribution given how freely these issues circulated across all three minting centers.