‘Nick the Stick’

Few monarchs left quite such a curious legacy on British pockets as Henry VIII. In his later reign he introduced silver plated copper coinage and, as will be mentioned in next week’s post, he quickly earned the nickname Old Coppernose.

Fast forward a few centuries and we find a rather sturdier piece of copper in the hand. This large 5 kopeck coin of 1833 was struck under Nicholas I of Russia, a ruler whose reputation for uncompromising discipline earned him the less flattering nickname Nick the Stick. The coin itself clocks in at around 22 grams and measures roughly 3.7 centimetres across, giving it the unmistakable heft of early nineteenth century Russian bronze.

The obverse shows the familiar double headed eagle of the Romanovs, while the reverse carries the simple denomination КОПѢЕКЪ above the E M mintmark. These coins circulated widely and took a fair amount of punishment. Soft copper and hard winters were never a gentle combination. As a result, genuinely crisp examples are scarce. A decent mid grade piece like this would typically sit below the fifty pound mark, while anything heavily worn tends to fetch only a few pounds.

Coins like this 5 kopeck sit at an appealing intersection between history and metal. They are solid, honest artefacts from an era when empires jostled for influence, treaties were inked with nervous glances, and even a humble copper coin carried the weight of a continent behind it.