Wow, these are cool.. but it makes me very sad at the same time. http://www.madefromcoins.com/three-five-piece-necklaces.htm
wow, that's absolutely crazy! he could have just sold off the coins and had them make replicas from other ancients that were in really bad condition.. or even just made a grill out of gold and skipping the whole coin thing. wow.
See this is cool..and it doesn't harm anything.. well at least not too much. http://sense4fun.com/art/coin-sculptures.html Also found this and it also disturbs me but, it might be good for making presents out of those old pieces that have little to no value other than their silver content. http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/08/make_a_ring_from_a_coin_m.html
Just normal distruction of coins. When we were kids there were so many things we did to coins I'm amazed that there are any left. We shot at them with pellet and real guns, threw them accross rivers, threw them into wells, placed on RR tracks, Street car tracks, bounced off walls, dropped from tall buildings, played a game of toss with them, scratched our initials in them, melted them in almost anything liquid we could find, blew them into the air with firecrackers, melted with torches. Most kids had no idea who or what or where they came from. No one knew about rare coins. No one knew there were more than one place where coins were made. Coins like those on that chain or rope were the norm when I was a kid so since they were all over the place, who cared what happened to them.
Occasionally, a real rarity comes up for auction which was plugged. Even after the best expert repair, it is worth only a small fraction of it's worth if original. I've seen several Old Gold (Turban head, capped bust left, capped bust right) like that. They would have been worth many, many thousands if original. OUCH !!!
