Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire kopecks — struck by the ancient "chekanka" hammered method, where silver wire was cut into small blanks and struck between dies — were already anachronisms by 1706. Peter despised them, viewing the crude fish-scale coins as an embarrassment unworthy of a modernizing empire. He formally abolished the type in 1718, replacing it with milled coinage, but production had been winding down for years before that decree. The 1706 date places this piece in the final phase of a monetary tradition stretching back to Ivan the Terrible.