Kopeck - Vladislav Zigimontovych Moscow mint, Gold

Vladislav Vasa — son of the Polish-Lithuanian king Sigismund III — was elected tsar by the Seven Boyars in 1610 following the deposition of Vasily Shuisky, an arrangement that briefly handed Moscow's mint authority to a Polish claimant who never actually set foot in Russia. These gold kopecks were struck during that fractured interregnum, when Kremlin gates were literally held by Polish-Lithuanian garrison troops. The gold issues were not circulating currency in any practical sense; wire-cut gold kopecks of this period functioned as donatives or reward pieces.

Vladislav was never formally crowned, and by 1612 the Zemsky Sobor had organized the militia that expelled the garrison entirely.