Archive: People and Markets

The Bank Negara Malaysia, venue of the ICOMON Annual Conference 2023. Image: Wee Hong via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.

ICOMON Annual Conference 2023: Call for Papers

The 2023 ICOMON annual conference will be held in November in Malaysia. Speakers are now invited to send their abstracts on the theme: Reinforcing Museum’s sustainable competitiveness in the peak of digitization & social/global challenges.

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The “Great Kentucky Hoard” before the conservation and encapsulation.

The Great Kentucky Hoard of Pre-1865 US Gold Coinage

A cache of rare Civil War-era coins unearthed in Kentucky includes the finest-known 1863 Double Eagles as well as several interesting varieties and errors.

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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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Foreign Coin Production Ends at the Royal Mint – The End of an Era or Another Step Closer to a Cashless Economy?

The Royal Mint has announced that it will no longer produce coins for other countries, ending a business model that it has operated for 700 years. Michael Alexander puts this development into perspective.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

Third time’s the charm? After 2015 and 2019, Germany is once again issuing a coin commemorating German Unity. Photos: Wieschowski / Background: frankpeters from Getty Images via Canva Pro

Unity Coin Sows Discord: More Than Just a Matter of Taste?

The fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification are considered, despite occasional tensions between East and West, as a defining moment in German history, a cause for celebration for many Germans – but not, it seems, within certain corners of the German coin collecting community.
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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