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“Get your hands on” is an English idiom that means, “to acquire something.” It’s often, but not always, used with something physical, something you can touch. It’s often, but not always, something that you buy.
You might say, “I can’t wait to get my hands on the new iPhone.” That would mean, you can’t wait to acquire it, to get your own copy of the new iPhone. Notice, you would not say this about touching a model in a store. To use “get your hands on,” it has to be yours.
In today’s lesson, we said, that Europeans were anxious to get their hands on the new paper currency when the euro first came out in 2002. That means, they were anxious to change their money into the new currency. This was not something they bought, but something they acquired (via ATM’s and bank withdrawals).