Archive: People and Markets

The British Museum suffered what was probably the largest theft in its history and a scandal that shook the institution to its core. Photo: hurk / Pixabay.

Red Alert at the British Museum

Thousands of objects have disappeared from the British Museum – allegedly stolen by a senior curator. The matter was uncovered by an antiquities dealer, whose warnings fell on deaf ears. The museum’s director has stepped down, and this seems to be merely the tip of the iceberg.

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CoinsWeekly Special Issue for the TICC Tokyo 2025

After overwhelming interest in the last years, we have once again published a printed CoinsWeekly Special Issue for TICC 2025, which takes place in Tokyo from April 26 to 28. If you can’t make it to Tokyo, you can download the PDF here.

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The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Coins: Now Available Online

The Khalili Collections are in the process of digitizing the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic coins, one of the largest private collections in this field. Over the next two years, around 13,000 coins will be made available on the official website, which already features 2,280 coins.

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Caribbean Guilder: Joint Currency Introduced for Curaçao and Sint Maarten

The new currency replaces the Antillean Guilder, retains its value, and is pegged to the US dollar – with fresh designs inspired by the sea and local culture.

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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.

VOC: The Other Side of the Dutch Golden Age

VOC coins tell the story of the Netherlands’ colonial past. The States General granted the VOC all the rights of an independent state: it could declare war, make treaties and issue its own currency. Join us on a trip to Indonesia, the place where the spices grew that financed the Dutch Golden Age.
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