I think it's just more fun when finding gold is something amazing rather than spare change you find under the couch.
This!
When I started my last campaign, I instituted a "silver standard" but I kinda did it on the sly...it's mostly just vocabulary. I stopped referring to money as "gold-pieces" and "silver-pieces," and started calling them by their in-game name, and it's made a huge difference in the game assumptions of what money is and how much it's worth.
Copper pieces are called "coppers" or "marks," and they are the preferred currency of commoners and laborers. In present-day American money, a copper would be the cash equivalent of a $1 bill.
Silver pieces are called "crowns," because they have an image of a crown on one side. They are the preferred currency of skilled laborers and tradesmen. They're roughly the cash equivalent of a $10 bill in present-day money.
Gold pieces are called "sovereigns" because they have an image of the king on one side. They are the preferred currency of nobles and the ruling class. (They are comparable to a $100 bill.)
Electrum pieces aren't used, because I couldn't find a use for them other than "because they're in the book."
Platinum pieces are extremely rare, and are called "Guilders" because they are used almost exclusively by the trade guilds to move large amounts of money from one place to another. They aren't widely circulated, and most locals haven't even seen one. (They are comparable to a present-day $1000-dollar bill.)
Whenever the party haggles for goods and services, or purchases items from local merchants, I always quote the price in terms of Crowns or Sovereigns, depending on whom they are doing business with. After a couple of gaming sessions of "wait a minute, what's a
crown again?" everyone has gotten the hang of it.