Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire kopecks — struck by the ancient "fish-scale" method of hammering blanks cut from drawn silver wire — were already an anachronism by 1705. Peter despised them. He found them embarrassing relics of medieval Muscovy, easily clipped and almost impossible to counterfeit-proof, and he was actively engineering their replacement with a Western-style milled coinage even as the mint continued striking them. Production of the wire kopeck was officially terminated in 1718, making the 1705 issue a product of a monetary system already condemned by its own tsar.