Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I overhauled Russian coinage aggressively in the early 1700s, but the wire-money kopeck — hand-struck on irregularly shaped flans cut from silver rod — was already an anachronism by the time this piece was made. These so-called "fish scale" coins had changed almost nothing since Ivan the Terrible's monetary reform of 1535. Peter despised them, considering their primitive form an embarrassment against Western European coinage, and began phasing them out almost immediately in favor of mechanically minted round coins. By 1718 they were gone entirely.