Kopeck - Pyotr I

Peter I's copper coinage reform of 1700 is well documented, but the silver kopeck of the same year occupies an awkward transitional moment — it was among the last issues produced by the old wire-money technique, hand-cut from silver rod and struck between dies, a medieval method unchanged in Russia for centuries. Within two years, Peter's sweeping monetary overhaul would render this production method obsolete entirely, replacing it with milled coinage on Western European machinery acquired partly through his own Grand Embassy travels of 1697–98.