If one were to ask collectors of world coins what they most admired in the Russian series, in many cases the answer would be the copper coins of Catherine the Great (1762-1796). Numismatists the world over have collected these coins for nearly two centuries, especially the large 5 kopecks, which weigh over 50 grams.
Although many collectors tend to think of these coins as struck only by Catherine, in reality the series was commenced under Empress Elizabeth I in 1757. There had been constant monetary upheavals in Russia since the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Peter the Great first changed the old Muscovite system of silver wire kopecks to a modern European style of coinage. This was nowhere more true than in the copper coins, where the weight standard had been changed on several occasions.
The standard for copper coinage established in 1757 was for 16 rubles worth of coin to be struck from a pood (16.38 kilograms) of pure copper. This meant, for example, that 1,600 kopecks (or 800 two–kopeck pieces) could be made from that quantity of copper. Under this system the Moscow and Ekaterinburg mints struck large numbers of copper coins. The military ordnance works at Sestroretsk, which specialized in cannons, also struck copper coins in the late 1750s but usually without special identification.
Under the
