Archive: People and Markets

London Museum Receives Roman Artefacts and £20 Million

The London Museum receives generous support. Bloomberg Philanthropies is providing not only £20 million, but also more than 14,000 Roman artifacts that were unearthed prior to the construction of its London headquarters in the heart of the city – at the site where the Temple of Mithras once stood.

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Bimetallic Coin Celebrates 150 Years of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court

With a 10-franc bimetallic coin, Swissmint commemorates the founding of the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland 150 years ago. The coin is available today.

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From a Collector’s Market to an Investor’s Market: Reasons, Consequences, Opportunities, Part 2

Today we continue Ursula Kampmann’s analysis of the change from collector to investor market with the second part. Find out how the market for American coins became a perfect investor’s market.

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Cheyenne, Wyoming. Background: Vasiliymeshko / CC BY-SA 4.0

Suspect Arrested for Double Homicide at Coin Shop Nine Years After the Crime

The double murder of a coin shop owner and a second victim in Cheyenne, Wyoming, lay unsolved for almost a decade. Now a suspect is on trial – the very man who had called the police to the crime scene.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

Silver for Württemberg

In the early modern period, much of the Black Forest, an idyllic mountain range in southwestern Germany, was a booming industrial center. A major part of the silver used to mint Württemberg coins came from this region. The Heinz-Falk Gaiser Collection, on offer at Künker on 23 September 2024, includes many coins made from Black Forest silver.
Karl Ludwig von Bruck, the mastermind behind the Vienna Coinage Treaty. We chose not to depict Emperor Franz Josef I at this point, who is shown on the coins, but the liberal politician Karl Ludwig von Bruck. Born into the family of a bookbinder in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal, Germany), he worked his way up from a merchant’s position to become Austria’s finance minister. He could almost be described as a beacon of hope for Austrian economic policy. It was tragic – and not just for him personally – that Franz Josef “ungraciously” dismissed him in April 1860 on false suspicions. The then 61-year-old took his own life. This deprived Austria of an imaginative politician who might have prevented its economic marginalization by Prussia.

A War Fought with Unusual Weapons: How Prussia Used Finance and Politics to Force the Habsburg Hereditary Lands Out of the German Confederation

On 26 March 2024, the Künker auction house will offer the Tursky Collection with coins of Emperor Franz Joseph I. We use specimens from this collection to tell the story of how Prussia used its economic sway to become the sole hegemonic power in Germany.
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