I recently saw a list of finnish food prices from 1880. A worker earned 20 pennia a week. A full barrel of potatos cost the daily earnings. A bad horse cost about 25 markkaa, a cow 5. A upper class person could earn almost 10MK a day. A city house cost 1000 MK.
But imagine, the Russian empire rouble was five times more worth than the Markka.
I wouldn't say those currencies were worth a lot. Their value was a fair representation of the public's faith in the ability to exchange the notes for precious metals held by the issuing authority, and in the case of coinage, by the precious metal content in the coins themselves.
Once the gold and silver standards were dropped and coinage compositions switched to base metals, currencies started losing their value and became much more susceptible to economic swings and inflation. Fast forward 100+ years, and you arrive to today's currencies which are worth so little, we are forced to remove lower denominations since they no longer have a practical use and cost more to mint than their face value.
