The American Numismatic Money Museum - Money Galore in Colorado Springs

Money makes the world go round, as they say, and it has, ever since the ancient Lydian's devised the world's first coins. Without those shrewd Lydian's, we might still be trading chickens and wheat for services and goods. It's kind of weird, looking at those first Lydian coins - you're apt to find bigger pebbles at a playground - and yet, those petite electrum pellets started an entire monetary system rolling. I saw those tiny Lydian coins, as well as some other interesting money, as part of the Money of the Ancient World exhibit at the American Numismatic Association Money Museum, located near downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado. Fascinating place, the Money Museum. I spent a couple of hours strolling around the two-story building, looking at gleaming cases of money, coins bearing the likes of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, wondering if perhaps they'd used any of the actual coins in front of me. And speaking of Caesar, both Caesar and his assassin, Brutus, are represented on coinage - and since the two men are forever linked through history due to that nasty little dagger business, it seems only appropriate that their coins share the same gleaming glass case. In fact, all twelve Roman Caesar's have coins bearing their likenesses, and they're all right there in a brilliantly lit, glass enclosure - Julius, Augustus, Nero, Constantine II, Caligula, etc., the very who's who of the history of the Roman Empire - waiting for you to come look at them.