Catalog
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| Issuer | Russian Empire |
|---|---|
| Year | 1709 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | A crowned horseman, representing the Tsar, mounted on a galloping horse facing right, wielding a spear in the traditional depiction inherited from earlier Russian wire money. The design is rendered in a characteristically crude, flat relief typical of chekha (wire-cut) coinage. The date inscription in Church Slavonic numerals appears beneath the horse's hooves in the lower field. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse script | Cyrillic |
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| Additional information |
Peter I's wire kopecks — the old cheshuykas struck by hammering silver wire into irregular planchets — were already an anachronism by 1709, kept in production solely because the peasant economy depended on them. Peter despised the type and had been pushing reformed round coinage since 1700, but eliminating the wire kopeck outright risked rural chaos. By 1718 he finally suppressed it. The 1709 issues fall in the middle of that uneasy coexistence between the old hammered system and the new Western-style milled coinage Peter imported Saxon and Dutch equipment to produce.