I always figured those were too easy to counterfeit. They always seemed appealingly cheap for their vintage whenever I'm in Germany. Almost too cheap. Roman Emperors seemed a dima a dozen and the few markings would make it easy to cast one in wax and make countless more. As a result, I bought some old roman coin with a big nosed guy once, but left it at that. I always imagined some one with a big smelting pot pounding out ancient coins for travelers and tourists.
;-)

The Euro has also destroyed a lot of nice European coinage. The Marks were never much to look at, but the French and the Italian coinage had some attractive designs.

Walking liberty halves appeal to me even more than peace dollars. I agree, the St. Gaudens 20 dollar gold is quite attractive but rather costly. The large cents had some ugly "lady liberty" types. Coronet cents were worse than the previous flowing hair types. I suspect the flowing hair type seemed to much like "lewd abandonment" to more straight-aced Americans of the early 19th century.

When the Carter Dollar (SBA) and, later, the Pocahontas Dollar came out I nearly wretched. I actually submitted a design for the new dollar when they had the competition. However, it was far too attractive to merit serious consideration. As we all know...post WWII American money must be recognizably ugly next to other currency.

;-)