Awesome Coins

Change You Can Wear takes a momentary break from from crafting cool rings out of coins to transform a pair of U.S. half dollar coins into a tiny bell. It’s not exactly a useful thing, but it is a pretty nifty conversation piece.

TANU likes to create complex desktop scenes by stacking and balancing coins. Here, he shows off the build of one of his smaller creations, along with a slideshow of some of his many other currency balancing feats.

In Coffee We Trust. The talented Shaun Hughes walks us through the painstaking process of transforming an old 1959 US penny into a wonderful coin engraved with an image of Cuphead’s eponymous character.

While banks and even grocery stores have fully automated coin sorting machines these days, there’s something appealing about the simplicity and elegance of Klopp Engineering’s crank-operated coin sorters, which can sift through up to 600 coins per minute.

Trouble making up your mind about some critical life decision? Don’t leave it up to just any old coin. After all, you don’t know where that’s been. The freshly-minted, solid brass Decision Coin will make sure all of life’s little binary decisions are judged fairly and equitably.

When The Q isn’t building weapons from PVC and cardboard, or playing a the world’s loneliest ping pong game, he’s stacking coins. Here, he shows us how to neatly arrange 200 coins to create a cantilevered bridge that hangs off the edge of a table without using glue.

Australian artist Moerkey creates sculptures using recycled keys, coins, and copper as his primary media. While the skull, bowl, and wine bottle designs are very cool, there’s something about the giant sphere of keys that catches our eye. His smallest spheres are nifty too.

You’ll need to take 29 minutes out of your busy life to watch the entire video, but you should at least check out the first minute as artist Shaun Hughes shows off one of his most awesome creations, a 1973 Lincoln Penny that he’s re-engraved with a skull and intricate scrollwork.

Japanese artist @thumb_tani uses his skills to create fascinating – and sometimes impossible seeming – non-permanent structures by delicately stacking and interlocking coins and other small objects. You can watch the coinmaster at work on video here.

Wonderful rings handcrafted using antique coins from the U.S. Civil War era. Each one is unique and made from 90% silver / 10% copper. Perfect from history buffs, coin collectors, or anyone who appreciates fine craftwork. Available in men’s and women’s sizes.

A man demonstrates a useless, but somehow still captivating skill, as he manages to use samurai-like skill with a credit card to fling 15 individual coins out from a stack without knocking them over. We’d like to see the slow-mo replay now.

The Coin Jewelry Company transforms vintage American currency into unique rings, some of them made from 90% silver or more. The Morgan Silver Dollar is especially sweet. You can find many coin rings from other artists on Etsy too.

Arrrrgh! Real pirates don’t play poker with cheap plastic poker chips. Manly men play with pirate gold. These antiqued metal coins from onepointsix look like pirate’s booty, and come with colorful fake gems to complete the look.

Etsy sellers Dustin and Stephanie make guitar picks out of American coins, some of them several decades old. The edges of the picks have smooth beveled edges to reduce the wear on guitar strings.

Through sheer will, determination (and perhaps a bit of an OCD), Tai Star manages to balance a stack of 3117 coins on top of a single dime. Fortunately, he doesn’t live in an earthquake zone.

Over the years, these soft metal coins have been re-sculpted with creepy skulls. If the U.S. mint started producing these, they’d be the only currency we’d use. Dig around on eBay for some.

Too lazy to call heads or tails? Making a choice doesn’t get simpler than this. Made of “old English pennies, flattened, stamped and polished by hand.” If Two-Face was British, he’d probably use this.

Alliance or Horde, it’s gold that keeps the gears of war in Azeroth turning; these World of Warcraft Collectible Coins include 24 karat gold-, sterling silver-, and copper-plated bling.

These silver-plated bronze Open Source Coins may not be free like the causes they represent, but $3 of each goes to the Free Software Foundation; available in Linux and FSF flavors.