Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire kopecks — struck by twisting silver rod into small slugs and impressing them with hand dies — were already an anachronism by 1716, a medieval technique persisting into an empire Peter was frantically modernizing. He had introduced Western-style milled coinage in 1700 precisely to replace them, yet the wire kopeck survived another two decades because rural populations distrusted the new round coins. The Moscow mint continued producing them almost by inertia.

These late-reign wire issues are notoriously irregular in die alignment and flan shape, a function of the production method rather than careless workmanship.