Archive: People and Markets

Switzerland is “Guest of Honor” at the World Money Fair 2025

Next year, Switzerland will be the guest country at the World Money Fair. The Federal Mint Swissmint has a very special highlight in store for the fair: it will be presenting the 100-franc Gold Vreneli anniversary coin to the world for the first time.

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United States Department of State, Washington. Image: AgnosticPreachersKid via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Is the State Department funding a crusade against private ownership of cultural goods in the U.S.? Peter Tompa explains how taxpayer money was used to justify cultural property Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) or “emergency import restrictions.”

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INORCOAT: How to Make Minting More Sustainable

Are you annoyed by all the laws that make our lives more difficult but have no positive effect? Here’s an example of a law that actually makes sense: the planned ban on chromium (VI) electroplating is helping an innovative technology to make a breakthrough – and this development brings decisive advantages for the minting industry. Romain Waidelich of INORCOAT takes us behind the scenes.

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Dr. Ruth Pliego. Photo: ANS

Ruth Pliego Receives the 2023 Huntington Award

The Trustees of the American Numismatic Society (ANS) have named Dr. Ruth Pliego as the recipient of the 2023 Archer M. Huntington Medal Award for Excellence in Numismatic Scholarship. If you are interested in Visigothic coins, be sure to watch the lecture the honoree gave on this occasion.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

The impressive collection was untouched for over 100 years.

Highlights from the Bruun Collection

Stacks will sell the about 20.000 coins of the Bruun Collection in various auctions. The first sale features 300 Scandinavian rarities with an estimated value of 10 million US dollars. Learn more about two of the highlights: a Danish gold noble and a Norwegian Speciedaler dated to 1661 depicting the fortress of Akershus.
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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