A Festival for St Wenceslas

St Wenceslas is the central motif on Czechoslovak commemorative coins. And there is a good reason for it: in 1929, 750,000 believers celebrated the 1000th anniversary of his death. A coin series issued between 1923 and 1936 – on offer at Künker on 26 January 2022 – demonstrates how important St Wenceslas was for young Czechoslovakia.

Human faces, part 42: The Duke of Friedland

Why was the human head the motif on coins for centuries, no, for millennia? And why did that change in the last 200 years? In this episode we talk about Albrecht von Wallenstein and his business model.