Kopeck - Peter I

The 1704 kopeck marks Peter I's decisive break from the wire money tradition that had dominated Russian coinage for nearly two centuries. These tiny hammered "fish scale" coins — produced by cutting wire into blanks and striking them between dies — were replaced that year by a mechanically minted series as part of Peter's sweeping monetary reform, itself inseparable from his broader campaign to Westernize Russian institutions. The old wire kopecks had become notorious for clipping and counterfeiting, and their irregular shape made them useless for the kind of large-denomination accounting the modernizing empire required.

This silver example sits at the very opening of that reform sequence.