Russian Empire — Peter I (1700 — 1725)

The coins of Peter I belong to the time of the monetary reform that took Russia from small silver "scale" coins to round coins of the modern kind and to decimal reckoning: one rouble equals one hundred kopecks.

The reform proceeded step by step. In 1700 copper dengas, polushkas and half-polushkas began to be struck, in 1701 silver poltinas, polupoltinniks and grivenniks and gold chervontsy, and from 1704 copper kopecks and the first silver roubles weighing about 28 grams. Until 1714 the rouble was struck in .833 silver, from 1718 in .728; the gold 2 roubles appeared at the same time.

Small silver became noticeably cheaper after 1713: altyns, 5-kopeck pieces and kopecks were struck in .396 silver. Copper came from the Kadashevsky and Naberezhny mints in Moscow, silver and gold from the Kadashevsky and Krasny mints, and in 1724 the Saint Petersburg Mint was founded. In 1723 a heavy copper 5-kopeck coin weighing 20.48 grams appeared.