Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire money kopecks — struck by hammering a small slug of silver wire between hand-cut dies — continued a production method essentially unchanged since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The 1697 date places this piece in the years immediately preceding Peter's sweeping monetary reforms, which he would begin rolling out after 1700, ultimately abolishing wire coinage entirely by 1718 in favor of machine-struck round coins. These tiny hammered pieces were so easily clipped and counterfeited that their elimination was as much about fraud control as modernization.

The dies for wire kopecks were hand-engraved individually, guaranteeing no two are perfectly alike.