Wire Money - Early Russian Hammered Silver Coins, circa 16th Century

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09-Sword Kopek, Ivan IV	10-Sword Kopek, Ivan IV	11-Denga, Ivan IV	12-Denga, Ivan IV
13-Denga, Ivan IV	14-Denga, Ivan IV	15-Denga, Ivan IV	16-Denga, Ivan IV

This photo gallery shows the early Russian silver coins called "Wire Money" ("Fish Scales" - "Чешуйки" in Russian) that were hammered at the Novgorod, Pskov, Tver and Moscow mints during the reigns of a few Russian tsars (not all!). The dates of the coins range from 1479 to 1701. The images depict coins from the hoards that I recovered with a metal detector in the eastern Baltic Sea region in Europe (see my full stories: Discovery of a Huge Coin Hoard and Coin Cache Discovery).

Each image is accompanied with the complete description of the coin's design and the exact cyrillic script of the coin's legend that corresponds to the coin shown according to the catalogue. The depicted wire coins might lack certain details of their design due to the flaws in the crude method of their production, which is described on page 1.

Current prices for Wire Money range from $1 to $6 per coin in Extremely Fine condition at the Russian internet auctions that have recently been flooded with the Russian hammereds.