A beard tax coin from 1705. U.S. State Department

In 1698, Tsar Peter the Great of Russia, as he would come to be know, was waging a war on beards. In an attempt to modernize his empire and make it more like the west after spending years exploring Europe in disguise, Peter instituted a tax on facial hair. You could avoid it by shaving, but if you opted to pay the tax, you would receive a token to verify your beard as legal, and an especially rare version of one of these tokens has recently been found.

The coin was discovered by archeologists at the Pskov Archeological Center, according to The Daily Mail, who only found the coin in question recently while digging through a cache of coins found in a dig from 2016. This specific coin, a 'beard kopek' from 1699 is particularly notable and rare as it was issued to peasants, who paid a much smaller tax to preserve their beards than nobility, and received a copper coin as proof of payment, as opposed to a silver one. This newly discovered beard kopek is only the second known to still be in existence.

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Russian archeologists have found a 'priceless' 300-year-old 'beard kopek' in a ruined 17th Century building https://t.co/iOYf6ynyvf — Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) August 24, 2018

"Nobody would dare to name its price on this," senior scientist of the Pskov Archaeological Centre Tatiana Ershova, told The Mail. "It is truly a unique find."

Peter's policy of taxing beards, extreme as it may seem, was actually a compromise after the Russian Orthodox church pushed back on his initial decree that there be no beards at all. The tax persisted until 1772 after which many of the tokens were melted down so their metal could be used in other currency. Although it seems that at least two men held onto their coins along with their beards.

Source: The Daily Mail

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