Discovery of a Hoard of Hammered Silver Coins
Early Russian Wire Money - "Fish Scales": Denominations and Weights
"Wire Money" - type of early Russian coins, were produced from 980 AD to 1718. The silver was imported from China in the early years, later it was brought from the Western Europe in form of silver Thalers. The process of making the wire money coins would begin with melting of the silver recieved by the mint for special hot cleaning. All the Early-Russian silver coins of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries had the "960" milessimal fineness.
Then the silver bars were processed into wire of the needed diameter. The wire was cut into measured lengths which were flattened and annealed to gain their plasticity. The resulting blanks were struck between two dies. During the hammering the dies were not conjugated: the lower die was fixed in a special support, the upper die was held in the hand of the silversmith, who directed it on the blank laying on the lower die.
Denominations:1 Rouble = 100 Kopeks = 200 Dengas = 400 Polushkas (after Monetary Reform 1533-1538) |
Time Periods of coins shown:1533-1584 (under the rule of Ivan IV Vasiljevich (Ivan The Terrible)) 1606-1610 (under the rule of Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky) 1611-1617 (Swedish occupation) |
Mints:Moscow Novgorod Pskov Tver' |
Coin Weights:1 Kopek: 0.68g 1 Denga: 0.34g 1 Polushka: 0.17g |
When I found my first Russian hammered coin, at first I could not figure out how such a tiny and ultralight coin could be even held by fingures, nothing to say about a difficulty in counting such coins! Then I learned about their exact weight, to the hundreds of a gram! The weight exactly doubles as the coin's denomination increases. After I made a few calculations, I was amazed how practical these coins were in everyday life 500 years ago.
Because of their ultralight and precise weight, wire money or hammered "fish scales" were not counted one by one during the transactions. Instead, for buying goods these coins were used in big quantities and measured by weight. For example, when one needed to buy a horse for five roubles, he would achieve a correct weight equivalent of "fish scales" to five roubles by pouring the tiny coins onto the scales.
If the person had Kopeks available for the purchase, the equivalent weight of Kopeks to five roubles would be counted as follows: 0.68 g x 100 x 5 = 340 g or 500 Kopeks. The interesting thing is that it would not matter coins of which denomination, kopeks, dengas or polushkas, would be used for a transaction. In each case, the person would have to weigh the same 340 g! Therefore whatever coins one would have in his coin pouch, whether they were of mixed denominations or not, all he had to do was just to weigh exactly 340 g of them! What a great convenient system! Instead of counting coins, one had to simply weigh a bunch of them! I suppose the price tag for the horse would read "340 g of Silver"... Funny indeed.
What still surprises me is that these coins were not lost in big numbers. I guess that 500 years ago people really valued their money and treated them with care and respect. Oh well, we now still value their money the same way, otherwise there would not be such a great hobby in our lives! Ok, enough philosophy for my simple story. Let us get back to it!
Meanwhile, I kept on digging up and finding on the surface more silver hammereds.
Silver Coin Lying on Surface!
Hammered Coin Reflecting Sunlight
So Called "Sword Kopek" of the Same Time Period
We searched the spot (10 yards by 5 yards) for hours! Basically, such a productive spot would be called a "Coin Dispersal" - a result of the field plow hitting the upper part, an "iceberg tip", of the coin cache and bringing the coins up to the surface. After many years of subsequent field plowing, the coins would spread in a triangle shape pattern on the ground. …At the end of our lucky day, we counted 34 hammered silver coins from 16th century among other coins!
A Nice Little Pile of Silver Hammered Coins
All Finds of the Day
Later in the evening, my other treasure hunting buddies came back from their WW2 dig. Unfortunately, they arrived empty-handed and totally exhausted. I surprised them with my finds but we all were too tired to talk about it. We decided to spend the night in the field so we could start detecting more "fish scales" early in the morning. We set up our camp and went to sleep.
A Gorgeous Sunset Completed A Day
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