Today I pulled an old coin from my stack that I got at my LCS a couple years ago. It's from Germany so will probably blow his load when he sees it xD
This coin is made of silver and has to be one of the oldest coins in my collection, let's take a look.
The obverse shows a castle surrounded by some kind of branches. The denomination is below that in a circle, "IIII SCHILL" for 4 schillings. On the left it says, "current 1725" which is an interesting way to say the year. Then on the right it says, "HAMBURGER", because who doesn't love a juicy hamburger!?
On to the reverse, which has a crowned imperial double-headed eagle with orb on breast! WOW!
Then there are a shitload of abbreviations that I have no idea about,
"CAROLUS.VI.D.G.ROM.IMP.SEMP.AUG. I H L".
This is the first year this coin was minted and there were 558,000 pressed. I wonder how many are still around?
The most interesting part to me is the thickness, which is 0.6 mm. Compare that to a modern US dime at 1.35 mm! Half the thickness, crazy.