I also enjoyed this story. The character was fascinating, the glimpses at the other worlds revealed by the coins intriguing, and Alistair 's outro really brought it home for me. Morever, I like stories that tend to explore a facet of life in which I am unfamiliar such as coin collecting and I loved the well researched nature of the coins being discussed throughout.
There was a brief period where I did a bit of coin collecting. I worked in a store where each night I had to count down my till for the next shift. I started discovering occasional silver quarters and Buffalo nickels in the till when I would count it down for the night and had the idea to swap out these valuable coins for their normal quarter and nickel counterparts (always careful to show what I was doing on the security cams). I never thought I would get rich but it was a fun way to break up the monotony. Anyways, after a couple months I had about a half dozen silver quarters which can go for about 5 dollars apiece. I had these on my dresser with the intention of selling them. However, one day, my wife's aunt was looking for some change to get a soda and saw the coins on my dresser and used them to get a Pepsi. I wasn't mad or anything, but I did tease her about the Pepsi she was drinking being worth about $25. Thus ended my coin collecting days.