Continuing my mission to explore author merch and author swag, my latest experiment is trying to create a dragon coin. I recently read The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, and loved his descriptions of coins within the story. But I can’t find anywhere online that suggests he (or his publishers) might be selling them. I feel like lots of his readers/fans would be interested in buying the coins, because the currency is so well described in the book…but his publishers obviously don’t feel the same!
However, it did make me wonder if any other authors had actually tried to make customised coins to sell with their books. I thought I might find hundreds because it seemed like such a great idea, but actually there aren’t many at the moment (June 2026).
Patrick Rothfuss
Another fantasy author who features great coins in his books is Patrick Rothfuss. His Kingkiller series mentions several coins, and some of them are available for fans to purchase on the Worldbuilders Market website:
Brandon Sanderson
On the same Worldbuilders Market website, there are also coins available from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series:
Ruby Roe
Ruby Roe is a great example of an indie author who has had a limited-edition coin made for her fans to collect. Scarlett’s Decision Coin is a hefty 40mm diameter coin with a bronze finish, and it helps fans make yes/no decisions on “morally questionable decisions”. Here’s a screenshot of how it looks on her website:
Time to Experiment!
So… now I know it’s actually possible for authors to create coins based on their work, it’s time for me to do some experimenting of my own!
ChatGPT and I have invented a (fictional!) fantasy book, where dragons are in charge of the human world. They obviously need some coins that will remind humans who the bosses are, so Google Gemini has helped me to imagine the kind of coin they might need:
Until right now I always thought that the front of a coin was just called, er, “the front”, and the back side was called the “obverse”.
WRONG! Apparently it’s the front of the coin that’s called the obverse. So now I know.
This was the next iteration:
Where do you even start to make something like that? Well, I started by going to my local MakerLab, and using their 3D printer to make some moulds:
More to come on this, later!
Have you tried to make or commission coins as author merch? How did it go? Do you know of other authors whose coins I can add to my list above? Let me know in the comments below.