Coin collections don't exactly get me out of bed in the morning. Especially when what I thought would be at least a room's-worth of exhibition, turns out to be a single cabinet in the middle of the Fitzwilliam's Glaisher Gallery. I know coins and medals are small, and yet shouldn't there be more of them to constitute a "Special Display"? Ok, maybe I was expecting too much. As I had a look, where only ten minutes was necessary to view all of the less-than-twenty pieces of metallic currency, I was vaguely surprised by how much I learnt.

As a sort of wind down after the hype of the Vermeer's Women exhibition, this small display shows an ulterior side to the "Golden Age" of the artist's Holland. Vermeer may have been short of money - a worry which apparently lead to his early death in 1675 - and yet Amsterdam had been the greatest financial centre in Europe. This exhibition not only gives the history of this surge in Dutch prosperity, but also provides a brief background to the volatile political relationship between the English and the Dutch around the time of Cromwell's reign and the naval wars. Coins are more than just currency: they are tiny pieces of art.

This display may shout the name "Vermeer" in its title, and yet the names that really matter, like Christopher Adolfszoon, Jan Roettier, Thomas Simon and Peter van Abeele, are whispered through the cabinet glass. They were the artists who designed and sculpted the images, like the intricate medals depicting sea battles, where the hulls of the galleys actually protrude out of the metallic surface amidst bronze waves.

This modest exhibition is worth noticing and visiting if you are interested in Vermeer, or the history of currency, or in the artists who brought art under the noses of the trading populous. And yet, here is a small warning: Go to the Fitzwilliam and see the display with the other works in the gallery; don't go just with the expectation that it will fill an idle afternoon. It may be worth it, but this money doesn't go very far - literally.