Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire money kopecks — struck by twisting silver rod into small blanks and impressing them with hand dies — were already an anachronism by 1698. Peter despised them. He found the fish-scale coins embarrassing against the milled coinage of Western Europe, and his reforms would eventually kill the type entirely; the last wire kopecks were struck in 1718. This particular issue falls squarely in the years when Peter was returning from his Grand Embassy to the West, newly obsessed with modernizing every institution he touched, the mint included.