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Kopeck - Peter I

Issuer Russian Empire
Year 1705
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Value 1 Kopeck (1 Копейка) (0.01)
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Obverse description Equestrian figure of the Tsar depicted as a mounted warrior, galloping to the right and holding a spear or lance in his raised hand, in the traditional 'Rider' (всадник) type inherited from earlier Russian coinage. The irregular flan, characteristic of wire money production, frames the boldly struck but often partially visible design. Cyrillic date numerals appear beneath the horse's hooves in the lower field, rendered in the Old Church Slavonic numerical notation.
Obverse script Cyrillic
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Additional information

Peter I's wire kopecks — struck by the ancient "chekanka" hammered method, rolling silver wire into small blanks and impressing dies by hand — were already anachronisms by 1705. Peter despised them, calling them "fish scales" for their irregular, elongated shape, and had been pushing to replace them with milled Western-style coinage since his return from the Grand Embassy in 1698. The new machine-struck kopecks finally arrived in 1718, rendering these hammered pieces obsolete almost overnight.

The 1705 date places this piece in the transitional years when both systems briefly coexisted.

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