Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire money kopecks — struck by the ancient chekanka method, hammering blanks cut from drawn silver wire — were already anachronisms by 1706. Peter despised them. He found the tiny, misshapen flans an embarrassment compared to the milled Western coinage he had studied during his 1697–98 Grand Embassy, and he was actively dismantling the old monetary system even as this piece was struck. The round, machine-made kopeck that replaced them arrived in 1718, ending a coinage tradition that had persisted in Russia for nearly two centuries.