On Friday morning, I decided to shell out the handful of coins I had accumulated from spending Colombian pesos. Normally, I find spare change quite annoying. It’s inefficient. I don’t like keeping a bowl of metallic coins that are worth less than the bowl itself. But today, as I counted the coins and made piles with different denominations, my attention drifted to something else. I started to notice the engravings on the coins. They were beautiful. Each denomination had its own engraving with...

On Friday morning, I decided to shell out the handful of coins I had accumulated from spending Colombian pesos. Normally, I find spare change quite annoying. It’s inefficient. I don’t like keeping a bowl of metallic coins that are worth less than the bowl itself. But today, as I counted the coins and made piles with different denominations, my attention drifted to something else. I started to notice the engravings on the coins. They were beautiful. Each denomination had its own engraving with...