Kopeck - Peter I

Peter I's wire kopecks — the long-running "cheshuykas" hand-struck on flattened silver wire — were already an anachronism by 1717, a medieval technique surviving into the eighteenth century purely by institutional inertia. Peter despised them. He had been pushing milled coinage since 1700, and these tiny slivers continued circulating largely because rural populations distrusted the new round coins. Production of the wire kopeck was finally halted in 1718, making this among the last examples of a type struck continuously since Ivan the Terrible.