Archive: People and Markets

The Royal Coin Cabinet in Stockholm is going to be closed and stripped down

The Swedish national museum of economy is going to be closed down. This entails the relocation of the Royal Coin Cabinet and its notable library. At this point, no one knows where, when or how the coins and books will be available again. Harald Nilsson reports.

Trump’s Influence? United States Mint Removes Commemorative Medal from Store

The United States Mint has removed a commemorative medal honouring the police officers who defended the Capitol during the attack on 6 January 2021 from its website, sparking criticism.

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The British Museum first opened its doors in 1759. Over 250 year later there are still hundreds of thousands of objects not properly documented. Image: Ham via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.

British Museum Sets Out Plans to Digitize Fully the Collection

After the disappearance of thousands of objects, the British Museum aims to document all of their over 2 million objects within the next five years and make them available online. Mark Jones on why he wants to increase access to the objects now.

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Roberto Delzanno: Medaljer Konstnärer. Medaillen und ihre Künstler. Medals and their artists. 1st edition, 2022. Hardcover, 421 p. 21x30 cm, color throughout. ISBN 9789163994708. Price: 650 kr.

Medaljer Konstnärer – Medaillen und ihre Künstler – Medals and Their Artists

Roberto Delzanno presents his publication on five important Swedish medalists. The book of over 400 pages features texts in Swedish, German and English, as it aims to introduce Swedish medal art to the broader international collector community.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

The Gnadenpfennig – An Object Between Decoration, Medal, and Coin

Gnadenpfennigs are an extremely rare category of numismatic objects. Künker is proud to offer nine lots in auction 418 on 29 January 2025 that are, or are likely to be, gnadenpfennigs. We explain the purpose of these issues and when they were created.
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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