Holiday guide - museums

[Kid Romeo]

Thanks Pete

You are right, from what I know, the modern looking main building is newly built and the Director's office (administrative building now) used to be the old museum building, although both are now interlinked now via another recently built building which actually houses the Numismatics gallery, regional costumes and Indian National Army's Japanese arms and ammunition from WWII.

The museum do have a library and although this is my third visit, I was not able to check it out.

[MS]

Nice to see a well maintained museum in India with a numismatic section to boot. 

[Kid Romeo]

Website is updated now.
The album link is
http://kidromeo.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=6939192

[Figleaf]

Iranian collector donates rare collection of ancient coins to Mashhad museum
Thursday, October 8, 2009

TEHRAN -- Following a remarkable decision, an Iranian private collector recently donated a rare collection of ancient coins to the Astan-e Qods Razavi Museum's Stamp and Banknote Section in the holy city of Mashhad.

Mohammad-Saeid Sadat-Akhavi donated a collection of 400 coins dating back almost 2000 years, said director of the Stamps and Banknotes Section of the museum Mohammad-Hossein Yazdinejad.

"The one-of-a-kind collection consists of coins belonging to kings and sultans before and after Islam including items from the Sassanid, Samanid, Ghaznavid, and the Seljuk dynasties.

"The coins were minted in large cities like Merv, Dinavar, Tbilisi, Heart, Astarabad, Isfahan and Mashhad. The monetary units represented are drachma, dinar and dirham and several others," he added.

He continued, "They belonged to kings like the Parthian King Orodes II, Khosrow II, Mahmud Ghaznavi, Hulegu, Arghun Khan, Mahmud Ghazan and Mohammad Khodabandeh Oljeitu.

"The oldest coin belonged to King Orodes II and was minted 1950 years ago. Most of the coins are made of silver, copper, bronze, lead, nickel, and zinc."

Yazdinejad went on to say that the coins, which are a great source for historians, researchers and students, are stamped with various patterns, designs, symbols, and images of kings.

Astan-e Qods museum has received a good deal of attention from collectors because of its credentials, the careful preservation of its rare artifact collections and since it is adjacent to the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS), he concluded.

The Stamp and Banknote Section of the Astan-e Qods Razavi Museum houses a rich collection of rare stamps and coins and is visited by many Iranian and foreign pilgrims, tourists and philatelists..

Source: Tehran Times

[MS]

Pictures taken from my recent visit to the British Museum. There are 18 pictures in total. I have uploaded them on Photobucket and will embed the pictures here. Picture size is scaled down a bit. If the page takes time to load (depending on your bandwidth) then please bear with me.

[MS]

[MS]

[MS]

[MS]

[MS]

[UK Decimal +]

Now I know that you enjoyed your visit!

It's strange, but when you live in a town you very rarely visit the museum there.   I think a few trips into London are called for.

Thank you for the wonderful pictures MS.

Bill.

[MS]

Oddly I have been to the British Museum quite a few times without paying too much attention to the Coin Room. I used to enjoy spending time looking at Egyptian, Indian, Islamic and Chinese artifacts. I wasn't interested in numismatics until recently.

I did enjoy my trip though, it was fun catching up with old friends, touring the coin shops and visiting the old neighbourhood Not to mention a chance to see your crown collection first hand.

MS

[chrisild]

Thanks for the great photos! And I think the museum did a pretty good job. They don't simply exhibits a row of coins but also show related objects - presses, dies, plaster models ... and quite a few "primitive" means of payment which nevertheless are very interesting.

Christian

[mumbapuri]

Had the opportunity to visit the Athens Numismatic Museum on route to the Acropolis
http://www.nma.gr/index_en.htm
The entry was free and had just about 30 mins to look around and take some hurried pics..

Bunch of Alexander coins


Thaler coin


List of display of coins


Ancient coins





Though ancient coins is not something i understand much of, the place is a must visit in Athens, has been kept wonderfully, not crowded on weekdays and is 20 mins from acropolis/temple of Zeus. Besides that a visit to the Monastiraki square is also recommended . There is a coin shop there owned by 2 brothers (Dimitri is one of them) who have nice displays.

Silver coins on display at the coin shop at Monastiraki

[chrisild]

The Money Museum in Utrecht has a new exhibition: EyeCatchers.

http://www.geldmuseum.nl/museum/content/eyecatchers-intro

According to the info (in Dutch) you can now, for the first time in history, see the 100 most interesting, most curious, most beautiful pieces from the collection of the Geldmuseum. Guess this will partly or mostly be a multimedia presentation; they mention a touchscreen cabinet for example, and special showcases for kids. Have not seen the exhibition yet, but it sure sounds interesting ...

Christian