Archive: People and Markets

Royal Dutch Mint and Osborne Coinage Join the Heimerle + Meule Group

It was only recently that we posted about the acquisition of Reischauer by the Heimerle + Meule Group – but the next big announcement follows right away: the company acquired all shares in the Royal United Mint, who is the parent company of well-known businesses like the Royal Dutch Mint and Osborne Coinage.

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Lady Liberty meets Britannia – a special moment for coin collectors and bullion investors. Photo: Royal Mint / US Mint

Two Powerful Women – a Premiere in Gold and Silver

The British Royal Mint and the United States Mint collaborated to create a joint issue combining the well-known coin motifs of Lady Liberty and Britannia. They went all the way and had the chief engravers of both mints group up for a one-of-a-kind partnership.

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Acquisition of a Highly Significant Ensemble for the Coin Cabinet in Vienna

The Kunsthistorisches Museum has acquired 22 coins of the imperial couple Regalianus and Dryantilla and made them digitally accessible. This is all the more impressive considering that only about 160 coins of this imperial couple are known worldwide. These are the only Roman coins that were minted in what is now Austria.

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These images depicting alleged banknotes were published on X by the "Government of East Africa" account. They are fakes. Source: "Government of East Africa" via X.

When Is a Currency Launch – Not a Currency Launch?

Nowadays, it is frighteningly easy to send misinformation around the world in a matter of seconds. Michael Alexander from the London Banknote and Monetary Research Centre uses a recent example to show that important subjects such as currency unions, or even money in general, can also be affected by this.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

In Search of the Big Five

The Big Five – they are the stars on South Africa's commemorative coins. We visit the elephant, lion, rhino, buffalo, and leopard in their most famous reserve, the Kruger National Park. Let's see how many of the iconic five we can capture (with the camera).
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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