There are many collectors who specialize in the copper coins of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), especially the large five kopecks, but the demand falls off after 1796. Part of this lack of interest is perhaps due to the copper coinage of Paul I (1796–1801) with its singularly dull design.
In 1757 Empress Elizabeth ordered the coinage of copper at the rate of 16 rubles of coin to the pood (16.38 kilograms). This meant, for example, that 1,600 coins of one kopeck (or 800 two kopecks, etc.) would be struck from that amount of metal. In 1762 the ill-fated Peter III raised the standard to 32 rubles, thus cutting the weight of each coin in half, but Catherine II ordered that the old standard resume at the beginning of 1763.
With the murder in March 1801 of Czar Paul by an officer clique, his eldest son Alexander came to the throne; the new ruler was of an entirely different outlook and did not have the paranoia usually ascribed to his father. Paul saw himself as the supreme being of the country while Alexander thought of himself more as a caretaker of the Russian land and people and tried, as he saw it, to do his best for both.
