Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire kopecks — struck by the ancient chekanka method, pressing a blob of silver wire between hand-cut dies — were already anachronistic by 1702. Peter knew it. He was simultaneously building a Western-style monetary system that would formally replace these within a decade, making the wire kopecks of his reign transitional relics produced by a tsar actively working to abolish them. The 1702 issue falls just before his 1704 monetary reform introduced the round, machine-struck kopeck.