Archive: People and Markets

Only one year after winning the Saltus Award, Hanna Jelonek is honored with the 2023 Mel Wacks Judaica Art Medal Award.

The Mel Wacks Judaica Art Medal Award 2023

At FIDEM Florence 2023, the winner of the Mel Wacks Judaica Art Medal Award has been announced. The award is given for medals with Judaic, Biblical or Holy Land themes.

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CIT’s Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind

Again CIT pays tribute to the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden. In 2023, CIT’s coin is dedicated to the band’s fourth studio album “Piece of Mind”.

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Al was mentor to many young people in numismatics. Image provided by Stephen Album Rare Coins.

Dr. Albert J. Beck (1935-2024)

Dr. Albert (“Al”) J. Beck passed on Wednesday, June 12, 2024. Our friends from Stephen Album Rare Coins shared this obituary for their colleague with us.

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Voting for the Best Latvian Collector Coin of 2024 is Open

From 24 March to 6 April 2025, Latvijas Banka, in cooperation with the news portal Delfi, organises the traditional public vote “Latvia’s Coin of the Year 2024”. This vote will, for the 21st time, determine the public’s favourite collector coin issued during the previous year.

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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.

Royal Gold: England’s Five Guineas and the English Gold Currency

On 10 December 2024, Numismatica Genevensis will offer the most complete run of English Five Guineas ever sold at auction. The pieces are considered to be the most beautiful and the heaviest English circulation issues in gold. They were struck from 1668 to 1777, during the period when England replaced its bimetallism with the gold currency. Read on to find out more.
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