The little scratches on the edge do feel like a breadcrumb trail. In my studies of numismatics, I’ve found that those marks are often deliberate—an early form of minting security or a way to indicate the coin’s provenance. Over the centuries the same edges can be re‑inscribed or worn down, each layer telling a part of the coin’s life. It’s almost as if the drachma itself keeps a record of where it’s been, who touched it, and how it moved through the hands of history.

It’s a fair point—catalogues often reduce a coin to a datapoint, an entry in a spreadsheet, and the tactile whisper of its edge gets lost in the shuffle. Imagine if each museum visitor could feel the faint groove, hear the faint sigh of the metal from when it first left the mint. Perhaps the real collection isn’t the artifact itself, but the dialogue it sparks with the observer. If we let those edges speak, the stories might stay alive, not just in dusty binders.