Archive: People and Markets

Berkshire Coin Hoard. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

2022 Biggest Year for Treasure Finds in the UK

Earlier this year, the British Museum launched the latest Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) Annual Report. This showed that in 2022, over 50,000 archaeological finds were recorded, including 1,378 Treasure cases – the highest ever reported in a single year. See some of the highlights here.

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More than 2 million dimes were stolen while being transported from the US Mint in Philadelphia to Miami. Photo: BrayLockBoy / CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Great Philly Pocket Change Heist

In the US, four men are standing trial as they allegedly stole coins worth 234,500 dollars from a truck. That was a ton of work. since their loot consisted of more than 2 million dimes, which were difficult to transport and even harder to spend…

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Raymond Weiller (1938-2022) at a wedding reception in May 1989.

Raymond Weiller (1938-2022)

Only now it became known that Raymond Weiller, the former head of the coin cabinet of the Luxembourg National Museum, passed away in April 2022. Jean Krier remembers the distinguished Luxembourg numismatist.

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Bad news from Brunswick: MDM is apparently preparing to reduce its workforce. Collage: Canva / Wieschowski.

Decline in Print Business: MDM Announces Job Cuts

The Münzhandelsgesellschaft in Brunswick reports a decline in sales and plans to reorganise its sales and develop new products.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

Berlin and South Africa – A Time-Honoured Connection

Did you know that the first coins of the Boer Republic came from Berlin? It was quite a challenge to create the dies because the Berlin engraver Otto Schulz had no idea of Boer identity, which is why things almost went wrong…
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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