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Gaining access to the San Francisco Mint is not that easy. And it is outright prohibited to take photographs, strictly speaking. We can still provide you with interesting insights: old and new photographs of one of the world’s biggest mints.

A lot of stories can be told based on numismatic objects. The history of besiegement is one of them and thus, in memory of collector Georg Baums, we will concern ourselves with it and observe how fortresses on medals change over time.

Strängnäs, July 31, 2018. Thieves have run off with two crowns and an orb. These are unique relics of Swedish history that represent the nation’s conversion to Protestantism. Of course, we went to see them on our journey to the North.

If you’re looking for the island where the most treasures have been found, you don’t need to sail to the Caribbean. Far from it. The highest concentration of treasure finds is in the North, more specifically on the island of Gotland, which used to be a central trading post in the Baltic Sea.

Our series takes you along for the ride as we explore the Zurich of times past. In this episode you will listen to a Migros seller and a modern housewife talking back in 1925.

The belief systems of the ancient world teemed with beings who were a mixture of human, animal and divine elements. Many of these are so familiar to us that we no longer wonder when we see them. Yet some images are so curious that they demand further investigation.

Why was the human head the motif on coins for centuries, no, for millennia? And why did that change in the last 200 years? As a generous patron of Leonardo da Vinci, Ludovico Sforza rightfully earned his coin portrait.

There is a special coin among the lots offered at the Auction 42 of the Münzen & Medaillen GmbH: It’s a so called Wiener Stadtbancozettel Teilungsmünze, coined in 1807. The name sounds quite strange: What does it mean?

In May 2015 the research network DAMIN organized a meeting in Copenhagen. It focused on mints, technology and coin production. On this occasion Ursula Kampmann gave a lecture summarizing today’s coin manufacturing. We publish this lecture here.

For centuries, no, for millennia, human faces were the most popular choice for the decoration of a coin obverse. That the coin’s reverse can be just as fascinating will be shown in this episode of our series.