How Does an Artist Look at a Coin

How does an artist look at a coin? What does an artist see in a coin? Depends upon the artist, the coin and the circumstances, but what I'll share with you is my own experience as both an artist and a coin expert. Each coin is unique, has its own story to tell, measured by its own experiential journey through the Wheel of Circulation. I will often select a coin only by its unusual, sometimes even bizarre, appearance. Am I wrong in viewing coinage as art objects? I don't think so. We wouldn't dream of scraping down the greenish bronzes that come down to us from ancient Greece, yet the ancients saw the statues painted, not raw and eaten up by rust, as we customarily like to see them.