April 21, 2010 – At the end of January 1984, numerous newspapers reported a curious theft from the Niederrhein Museum. “It was no burglary, and the showcase appeared to be untouched at first sight”, the museum’s director remarked then.
However, the organisers of the special exhibition “2000 years of money in Duisburg” themselves were indirectly responsible for the theft. Adjacent to the showcase, they displayed a book showing two similar coins with a face value of DM 200.000 altogether. That prompted a casual visitor to steal the allegedly valuable objects during opening hours.
The purchase price of the two coins was DM 2.700. Probably only a fraction a concealer offered the thief. That must have been quite a disappointment for the impromptu pilferer.
More than 35 years later, at the beginning of 2010, a fellow student – after all, in Germany numismatics as an academic discipline at university lives on its mature age students – showed the robbed lender the very same two coins. The current owner was said to be a forester whose dog had found a leather pouch 15 years ago containing that coins. For a finder’s reward the forester handed over the coins to the happy collector who finally, after 25 years, can incorporate them again in his collection.