A Compendium Of Numismatic Displays In Museums Around The World (Evergreen)

Excellent!

The Rosgartenmuseum (Rose Garden Museum) in Constanz is actually a much better choice for the traveling numismatist who finds himself or herself in Konstanz Germany.

Non-flash photography allowed. All signs are German-language only. If you are typical thick-headed American like me who barely knows his Knie from his Kopf, I recommend that you take pics of the accompanying text. When you get back to your hotel you can enter the text into google translate to understand the nuances of what you have seen. Seems like there ought to be a translation app that works off of pics (not text). Please let me know if anyone out there knows of a good one. Being firmly uni-lingual is a real drag sometimes.

(I wrote up this discussion several months ago and in the meantime have discovered a that the Google Translate app does exactly what I was looking for. Simply aim your phone at the foreign text and then look at it through the screen for a real-time translation. Wicked cool!)

For me, the numismatic highlight of this museum was a series of colored glass panes dating to 1891, but with scenes from the 17th century coin making process. I've included them all below, with my best translations of the inscriptions (please feel free to recommend improvements as my gothic German is especially poor). There are also multiple displays of medieval coins from Constance and the odd Batzen tucked in among other objects. The display of medieval coin dies is very nice, although the lighting could be improved for those who are interested in seeing the fine detail. Several of the dies had a slight convex curve to them, perhaps to aid in coin removal following striking.

As a bonus to visiting this museum is access to the vast accumulation of stones, mosses, fossils, and artifacts. I have included a pic of some spearheads for @bobL as his collecting has recently gone in the direction of Parthian spearheads http://goccf.com/t/332703).

Lastly, I've included images of my oldest coin minted in the German Free City of Constance. It is a Batzen that was struck between 1499 and 1533 AD and is attributed as Saurma 1614.



1: Blank casting and [kuernen?]


2: Silver stretching


3: [weylan?]


4: Cutting out and flattening


5: [Aunk?] measuring the [Staff] airtank 16__


6:Test in the fire and on the balance


7: No inscription, but clearly this is a scene showing the dissemination of the finished coins.



Bronze spear heads:



Dies for striking medieval coins:




A Batzen of Constance from my collection:

Well done. Thank you for getting us all caught up.


The Google Translate app will do OCR from the camera for certain languages, German being one.

Super descriptions.

There are so many interesting museums out there!

Recently back from vacation in Spain and Portugal, and can comment on a couple of exceptional museums there.

First, the Museo Arqueologico Nacional (known as the MAN) in Madrid. BC Tokens recommended this one in a quick post last November, and I'll share some photos. Museum displays are curated in both Spanish and English, and OK to take photos. The museum's permanent exhibits are laid out chronologically by floor (pre-history, antiquity, Islamic era, reconquista), and there are representative high quality Iberian coins and/or hoards for each era in these exhibits, but there is also a special numismatic exhibit on the mezzanine (E) level .

As with some of the exhibits posted by others here (like the Constance museum reported by @spence), there is a lot in this exhibit on the technology of coining, its relationship to measurement systems (weights), economies and trade of the time, and so on.
So, it starts with smelting to purify the ore (here a smelted silver "cake" from 1-2d century BC)

...and ingots (these from the Nuestra Senora de la Luz shipwreck of 1752)


The exhibit moves on to coining technology with molds for casting 19th c. Moroccan falus and 2 falus coins:


And a Roman As explaining that casting was used because of the size of the coin:


Then on to hammered technology with this die for an Iberian denarius,


dies for Spanish colonial era coinage

and a screwpress


and something more modern: sheet, blanks, planchets and the 100 peseta coin made from them


A part of the exhibit was related to supporting technologies like weights and measures.
A set of Punic weights:



And coin weights paired with their respective coin for an Islamic era coin and a colonial era 8 escudo:



Last but not least, a nice display on how those counting tokens we see posted on CCF were used:



And an earlier technology, 6-7th century Visigothic accounting slates:

No prob @ck, but I would like to point out that @tdz made this last post. While I'm happy to provide the bulk of the museum descriptions, I think that this thread is much richer when we get multiple folks providing input from their own travels.

@tdz, somehow the last time I was in Madrid, I missed the MAN. I'll put it on my list now for whenever I'm back. By the way, I hope that you have a report from Portugal to post here too!

Excellent! Thank you for sharing the details.