Archive: People and Markets

The coin hoard, pot and lid. Credit: Gareth Beale.

Coin Hoard Gives Fascinating Insight Into Life Before the Glencoe Massacre

Hidden underneath a stone fireplace of a house in Glencoe, Scotland, a pot with silver coins was recently discovered. They were minted in the years shortly before the infamous Glencoe massacre of 1692. Was the person who buried these coins among the victims of the treacherous clan slaughter in the Highlands?

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Introducing Nanoshine: CIT’s Butterfly

CIT’s Butterfly seems delicate, fragile and beautiful, just like its real-life model. The technical marvel behind it only becomes apparent at second glance. Nanoshine is a completely new technology with the potential to transform the aesthetics of coin design.

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CIT’s Underwater Fantasy – Mermaids

The more we learn about the underwater world, its colorful, bizarrely shaped creatures and the sunken testaments to mankind, the more it captures our imagination and inspires our dreams. CIT translated this feeling into a numismatic shape. From a technical point of view, the application of enamel reproducing underwater visuals is highly remarkable.

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Benjamin D.R. Hellings, The Naseby Cup: Coins and Medals of the English Civil War. Yale University Press, 2024, 144 pp. Paperback, 209.6 x 247.7 mm, with 185 color illus. ISBN 9780300275865. Price: $25.00.

The Naseby Cup – Coins and Medals of the English Civil War

The Naseby Cup is a Victorian vessel of extraordinary numismatic importance, as many incredibly rare coins from the English Civil war are integrated into it. A publication on the cup and its coins will soon be available.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

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.

Joachimsthal and the Reformation

On 29 January 2025, Künker will auction a series of valuable Renaissance medals. They feature biblical topics and were minted in the region of Joachimsthal to spread the teachings of the Reformation. Johannes Mathesius, the author of Luther’s Table Talk, may have been at the origin of some of the motifs.
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