Lot of 27 Russian Dengas

Ruler: Mix Rulers
Era: AD 1730-1754
Dynasty: Russian Empire
Denomination: Denga
Weight: NA
Diameter: NA
Reference Number: To Be Updated
Obverse: To Be Updated
Reverse: To Be Updated
Comment:

A denga (Russian: деньга, earlier денга) was a Russian monetary unit with a value latterly equal to ½ kopek (100 kopeks = 1 Russian ruble).

Production of dengas as minted coins began in the middle of the 14th century. In their earliest form they were imitations of the silver coinage of the khans of the Golden Horde, usually bearing blundered or meaningless legends. Weighing about a gram, they were prepared by cutting silver wire into measured lengths, beating each length flat, and then striking the resulting blank between two dies. This resulted in slightly elongated coins, often showing traces of the original wire from which they had been taken. From Dmitry Donskoy’s time onwards the coins began to take a more Russian form, with depictions of people, animals and Russian legends, although legends partly in Arabic (the official language of the Horde) persisted on some coins until the time of Ivan III.

Dengas were made only in the southern Russian principalities; the state of Novgorod and the City of Pskov made their own slightly larger coins. In 1535 a reform took place, with the northern “novgorodka” being valued at twice the southern denga or “moskovka”. In the 1540s novgorodkas depicting a horseman with a spear (Russian копьё (kop’yo)) began to be made, and novgorodkas were thenceforth known as kopeks