Marvel coins.

Coins. What marvellous things they are. Without them, I wouldn't be able to buy the things that give my life meaning and prevent me plunging into an abyssal maelstrom of endless despair beyond anything even Norrin Radd could imagine - things like bubblegum and Curly Wurlies.

But there were other coins in my life when I was a child.

Coins that had my favourite heroes on them.

And those coins could only be acquired from the pages of 1970s Marvel comics. Forget your Decimalisation. That was a minor trifle in comparison. This was the real revolution in currency.

To be honest, I never had any of them and, despite my love of Marvel comics, I never really felt any urge to have any of them. Even now, vexed most sore as I am by a nostalgia that fair threatens to tear my mind asunder, I'm still strangely undriven by any desire to own them.

But, still, if their portrayal in the ads is anything to go by, they seemed a fine thing indeed and a cut above the items you normally saw advertised in comics, such as that genuine nuclear submarine on offer for $1.

So, in the end, I'd still rather have a Curly Wurly in my hand but it is strangely heartening to at least know that such things as Marvel coins existed and no doubt still exist, tucked away in some collectors' drawers, as shiny now as they were on the day they were first foist upon the world.