Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire kopecks — hammered from drawn silver wire, snipped, and struck between hand-cut dies — were a medieval technology still in use at the Moscow and Kadashevsky mints well into the early eighteenth century. The 1705 date places this piece right at the edge of Peter's currency reform, which would formally abolish wire-money production by 1718 in favor of machine-struck round coinage. These late wire kopecks circulated alongside the new round coins for years, frequently clipped further by forgers exploiting the lack of a milled edge.