Considering someone actually voted for it, I guess I could add some facts about my Peter I coin that I didn't have time to add in my original hurried entry...
Well, first of all, an important missing word is "Russia
wire kopek". But I guess most of you know it already
Another part that didn't make it to the entry is the catalog reference (KG 1586).
Second, despite the 1696 date, the coin's probably crude enough to pass for medieval if you don't know the specifics. Certainly similar technology had been used for Russian coins in the 15th and even 14th centuries; admittedly the style of (later) Russian wire money is pretty darn recognizable (some part of a horseman on one side, several lines of tiny letters on the other) and hadn't been used as such until the 1530s (early reign of Ivan IV).
[Unrelatedly: I wonder if this practice of putting the legend in several lines in tiny letters is inspired by Byzantine coins (anonymous or not). Certainly early Russian wire coins usually had circular legends, much like other European coinage - but then so did the latest Byzantine issues contemporary to this Russian practice! On the other hand, Arabic coins had multi-line legends since as long as they existed, so they might be a more plausible source of inspiration...
]
And finally, third...
You might've noticed that my original entry dated the coin as "circa 1696", but TIF's recap just gave the date as 1696, without any approximation sings, Which is correct? Both, actually.
This coin issue (KG 1586) is traditionally attributed to the joint rule of Peter I and his brother Ivan V; within that series, die studies put it as very very late, so that it is in fact the last coin listed in the relevant section of the KG catalogue (there are half-kopeks and counterfeits further on in the catalogue, and there is a further volume for Peter I sole coinage, but 1586 is the last officially-issued kopek in its volume of KG).
Meanwhile, other experts started to suspect (as far as I can understand, mainly based on legend matching - most other Peter obverse[1] legends had exact counterparts in Ivan's name, this one doesn't) that this issue is not in fact from Peter's joint rule with Ivan, but from his sole rule (and presumably has no place in this volume of KG, but they included it anyway).
Nevertheless, the traditional view is that Peter I's sole issues are exactly the ones with dates on them (which are at least all for Peter - none are attested for Ivan). KG 1586 doesn't have a date on it - in the place where immediately succeeding issues would have a date (right under the horseman), it says "Russia" (one letter of this inscription is visible on my example). Meanwhile, immediately
preceding issues use this place for the mintmark (well, there's a small group of coins with the same reverse that also say "Russia", but all the other reverses have the mintmark in there).
You might wonder where does the dating of this coin come in. Well, the earliest date attested on Peter I coins is (7)204, corresponding to 1695/96 AD and traditionally equated to 1696 (the year actually ended in September); so KG 1586[2], a dateless issue, couldn't have been issued later. (Die studies agree here.) Meanwhile, Ivan V died in January 1696, so if KG 1586 is indeed from Peter's sole rule, it has to be at least as late as that; giving it a period of Jan-Sept 1696, i.e. well within the year 1696.
But of course, as I said, the traditional view is that KG 1586 dates to the joint rule of Peter and Ivan; so if that version is used, the issue is not necessarily from 1696, but could be also from, say, 1695 or possibly even 1694 (it's unlikely to be far earlier).
You probably noticed by now that I'm just juggling expert opinions here. What is my
own opinion, you might ask? Well, the "Russia" issue certainly must've had to commemorate something patriotic. There's no obvious candidate in 1694 or 1695, but there is one in 1696 - the conquest of Azov in June-July. As such, my opinion is that this issue commemorates the conquest of Azov (and the general action surrounding it), and was minted in 1696 (likely in August of that year). This is, of course, my opinion only (I couldn't find any specific articles discussing this issue, though I didn't search much); but you can probably see that there's a strong case for 1696 anyway
[1] I've no idea what is the obverse and what is the reverse on Russian wire money; in this discussion, I use the terms based on Wikipedia claiming that the horseman is on the reverse; no idea if this is correct.
[2] from this point on, when I refer to KG 1586, I might as well mean the entire group with "Russia" under horseman, as the conclusions apply to all of them equally
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Posted 10/23/2013 05:30 am
