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Kopeck - Peter I
| Issuer | Russian Empire |
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| Year | 1698 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Technique | Hammered (wire) |
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| Obverse description | Equestrian figure of the Tsar depicted as a mounted warrior, galloping to the right and brandishing a spear, in the traditional style of Russian wire money (chekhi). The rider is rendered in a highly stylized, archaic manner characteristic of hammered kopecks of the Muscovite period. Cyrillic date letters appear beneath the hooves of the horse, denoting the year in the Byzantine era calendar. The entire design is struck on an irregular planchet cut from a silver wire rod, resulting in the characteristic oval or oblong flan shape. |
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| Obverse lettering | СS (Translation: 206 (С=200, S=6), means year 7206 by Byzantine calendar) |
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| Additional information |
Peter I's wire kopecks of this period were struck using the ancient "chekanka" method — a small silver wire blank hammered between two dies, producing the characteristically irregular, fish-scale shape that had changed little since the 15th century. Peter despised them. He considered the primitive coinage an embarrassment to his modernizing ambitions and spent the years immediately following this issue engineering a complete overhaul of the Russian monetary system, culminating in the milled coinage reforms of 1700–1718 that effectively killed the wire kopeck altogether.
The 1698 date places this piece in the final years of the old system, struck just as Peter was returning from his Grand Embassy tour of Western Europe — where he had seen modern mint operations firsthand.