Old Coins

My husband recently found some rusty old coins from around the world. Some of them are probably very common, and are from english-speaking countries like Australia, but others like the one pictured above have interesting writing on them that we can’t read, so we can only guess where they are from. They are mostly from the 60’s, so we think the person who collected them was some kind of world traveller in the late 60’s.

I’ve been imagining the kind of person he was, and all the fascinating trips he went on - through Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and even Africa, bringing back a coin or two from each country he passed through. What kind of occupation did he have that required him to do such extensive travel? Or was he just lucky enough to have the money and time to travel all over the world for fun? Of course there’s the less romantic idea that maybe he was just a coin collector and didn’t actually go to all these places - but since the coins were stored in a jar and not particularly well cared for, I like to think they were souvenirs.

When I traveled around Europe the summer after college, I kept a few coins from each country I went to. I later drilled holes in a few of them and made myself earrings as mementos of my trip. Somewhere, I also have an envelope full of Mexican coins from a summer I spent in Mexico City. Something about the different look and feel of coins from other countries makes something that might only be worth a few cents seem much more valuable as a souvenir, so I never bothered changing the last of my money back to dollars when I left countries I’d visited. I imagine the man who collected all the coins we found doing the same thing, but about 40 years ago - and with significantly more funds, since he made it to so many countries that I’ve only seen in pictures.

Little things like coins or ticket stubs or old photos are great for using in mixed media jewelry and art. I’m not going to turn a 40 year old coin collection into earrings without first trying to find out if any of the coins are worth anything, but looking at them got me thinking about designing with found objects again. It’s been a while since I did a found object resin piece, and I still have some circuit boards from my former dvd player that I want to do something with…