Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire kopecks — struck by the ancient "fish scale" method of hammering slivers of silver wire into irregular flans — were already an anachronism by 1703. Peter despised them. He considered their medieval production method an embarrassment to a modernizing empire, and by 1718 he abolished the denomination entirely in silver, replacing the whole archaic coinage system with Western-style milled coins. The 1703 issues thus fall squarely within the final decade of a minting tradition that had persisted largely unchanged since the 14th century.

The irregular flan rarely captures the full die impression, which is why complete strikes are documented and catalogued with unusual care in the GKH references.