Everybody likes a good laugh, especially at the weaknesses of others. Perhaps this is the reason why we all enjoy caricatures so much: because they make us laugh before we are taken aback and begin to reflect on them. The Aareal Bank obviously agreed with this view since the management had decided 20 years ago to assemble a collection of caricatures focusing on the very intriguing relationship of people with money. For this purpose, roughly 300 original works by Sempé, Hogarth, Daumier, Hurzlmeier, Haitzinger and a great many others were brought together. Now the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum houses that material: the Aaereal Bank entrusted its collection to the “Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und kritische Graphik“ as permanent loan. A first exhibition was presented as early as 2009 – let us hope that many more will follow.

What a huge surprise when the company Gorny & Mosch – Giessener Münzhandlung auctioned off a Roman portrait head from the late 2nd cent. A. D. at auction sale 184 on December 18th, 2009. It was a high quality marble portrait in a remarkable state of preservation which some ...

On March 8th, 2010, Gorny & Mosch will present a specimen of the mysterious key series of the early coin production. The Phanes stater from a private collection in Israel is estimated at 150.000 Euros. It is the ...

In the March 2010 auction sale of the auction and coin trading company Fritz Rudolf Künker in Osnabruck an extraordinary coin from the reign of Charles the Great will be offered for sale.

Time and again the happiness has been described a collector experiences when at a coin fair he finds the one, the small and seemingly insignificant object ...

Around midday on Saturday 16 December 2006 two metal detectorists strolled onto a field near Buckingham and within a few minutes picked up a valuable gold coin that was lying on the surface. By the end of the weekend ...

Herakles strangling the snakes, this subject occurs on the coins of some very important harbor towns of Asia Minor at the same time. This article will explain what’s behind it...

It is rather unspectacular what can be seen on German 1, 2 and 5 Cent coins: a simple oak branch – boring, one might say. However, the oak symbol is very old and closely connected with Germany, its national identity and its democracy for nearly 300 years...

In 1871, after the great victory over France and the unification of the German Confederation in the German Empire, ambitious German businessmen thought that everything was possible. They saw their English colleagues earning the earth in the colonies and wanted to do just the same...

What is it like when a government claims a monopoly on his culture? The real socialism in the former Soviet Union gives an appalling impression about what happens if the state prohibits any private collecting. Vasily Gerasimov, distinguished expert on the Russian coin scene, provides a close up view of the Russian numismatic world – during socialism and today...