[ThePhysicist]

I became more interested in coins and monetary systems after reading "A history of money" by Glyn Davies et. al. (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45426.A_History_of_Money). It's quite long but it goes into great detail about monetary systems and coinage throughout history. The discussion of how the Romans, Greeks and British used coinage to fund their wars and political endeavours, how they diluted the gold or silver content their different coins over time and how that led to unwanted side effects is quite fascinating, at least to me.

Most coins themselves are not very interesting from an artisanal point of view I find, it's more the story behind them that's often really fascinating.