I was pondering about this question the other day. Let me think aloud a bit. Today we conceive of coins as a form of art ("design," as we call it, in lack of a better word). The quite new Euro coins were surely designed, someone won a competition, even, and they are really beautiful, in my opinion.

And still they are very, very, very convenient. If the coin would be "art" at its purest, it might not include, say, as big numerals as it now does. In "10 cent" the "10" occupies half the coin. So even today, we have a mixture - there's something functional, and something artistic in art. (I have been thinking of a demarcation criterion for art based on its (lack of) "usefulness," as visible in this post.)

The ancients surely didn't conceive of coins as a form of art. Coins, like art, bear a message. But the message of a Roman coin is more like the message of a note from the Senate to a provincial governor. The message is NOT the medium - the message is far more important, and the medium is designed to convey the message.

Now, because of the conception we have - and probably partially because we cannot USE Roman, or other ancient, coins anymore - we conceive of them as something beautiful. They have acquired an aesthetic "value" (gosh I hate such feeble terms undefined!) and are now "art." Our coins, the ones we use today, are art, in part, but in part, not art, but something to be used.

LOL. OK. Let's see if I delete this post in a couple of hours!