Peter I's wire kopecks of 1700 were the last gasp of a medieval monetary tradition stretching back to Ivan the Terrible — hand-struck on irregular silver flans snipped from drawn wire, a technique unchanged for over 150 years. Peter despised them. He found them embarrassing relics unsuitable for a modernizing empire, and by 1718 he had abolished the denomination in silver entirely, replacing the system with milled copper coinage on the Western model. The 1700 date places this piece in the final years of that old order, struck while Peter was already deep into his reforms following the Grand Embassy to Europe.
Peter I's wire kopecks of 1700 were the last gasp of a medieval monetary tradition stretching back to Ivan the Terrible — hand-struck on irregular silver flans snipped from drawn wire, a technique unchanged for over 150 years. Peter despised them. He found them embarrassing relics unsuitable for a modernizing empire, and by 1718 he had abolished the denomination in silver entirely, replacing the system with milled copper coinage on the Western model. The 1700 date places this piece in the final years of that old order, struck while Peter was already deep into his reforms following the Grand Embassy to Europe.