Lots of games require that you deal with fake coins. A few favorites in my house include Small World, Camel Up, 7 Wonders, Tokaido and Sheriff of Nottingham. The problem, though, is that all of these games use little pieces of cardboard. While I understand the desire to keep the cost of the game to a minimum, there’s definitely something missed with the feel and weight of real metal coins.
Drawlab, a game company based in Athens, has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to solve that problem for gamers. Legendary Metal Coins will provide sets of real metal coins to be used in just about any game imaginable. The Kickstarter offers backers the ability to get coins in any of 11 styles: Elven, Dragon, Dwarven, Steam Punk, Pirate, Sci-Fi, Medieval, Arabic, Capitol, Far East and Greek.
I was given preview copies of six of these styles to take a look at, and I have to say I’m impressed. All of the coins are nice and heavy – the samples I got range from 3/10 of an ounce up to 7/10 of an ounce. By comparison, a US quarter weighs 2/10 of an ounce, while a 1969 UK 50 pence coin (the heaviest real coin I could find around my house) weighs a half ounce.
The smallest of the coins they sent me are the Far East, which are slightly bigger than a US quarter and about the same size as that old 50p coin, while the biggest, the gold Sci-Fi coin, is almost twice the size of a quarter.
The designs on the coins are fantastic, and each has been carefully crafted to match its theme. The pirate set have ships, compasses and a sea monster on the “heads” side and skulls and crossbones or anchors on what I took to be “tails”. The Far East set have square holes in the centers. My personal favorite, though, are the coins in the Sci-Fi set: each is an odd shape, and would easily fit in with a Sci-Fi-themed game. My wife, though, preferred the pirate set, while my son liked the dwarf and dragon sets. Looks like we may have a problem deciding on which set to actually order.
The Kickstarter offers a set of 10 copper, 8 silver and 6 coins in a style of your choosing for $19, with higher levels for progressively bigger sets of coins above that. They also offer the choice to make your own custom set containing the coins you want.
Also impressive: they are offering free shipping on these coins to anywhere in the world. All of the sets of coins will also come in a custom pouch, but there’s no picture on the Kickstarter page of the pouch, and it wasn’t included the sample they sent.
The only real downside I can see from getting a set of these to replace the cardboard chits in your favorite game is that a full set is going to be fairly heavy. Still, I think that the weight and feel of these coins will make up for that, and will really add a nice new dimension to your gaming.
I was trying to get the dragon set, but they don’t accept paypal… do you know if they have an email to contact them??
Thanks!