Kopeck - Peter I

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.