World Money Fair (Berlin) 2020-2021

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The next World Money Fair will be in late January/early February 2020, at the Estrel Convention Center in Berlin again. Details to come later.

What is interesting though: Gitta Künker, who became Managing Director of the "World Money Fair Holding GmbH" in mid-2018, has just been replaced by 82-year-old Albert Beck who, many years ago, founded the WMF. (Sorry, CoinsWeekly makes copying text snippets impossible. ) This does, however, not affect the position of the "World Money Fair Berlin GmbH" affiliate's Managing Director Barbara Balz.

The World Money Fair 2020 opens its doors to the public on 31 January, and closes on 2 February. Guest of Honor will be the Japan Mint. Purely accidentally of course the 2020 Summer Olympics will be in Tokyo ...

Christian

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This year's World Money Fair (31 Jan – 2 Feb 2020) had full or crowded halls at the convention center – something that these days would be a No-No. And due to the pandemic, the WMF 2021 has just been canceled.   Would have been at the end of January (29–31 Jan 2021), but will now be replaced by ... well, we will see. Here is the preliminary announcement in English.

Christian

[eurocoin]

I was just yesterday still looking on their website to see if the thing would be going ahead. Of course it is not realistic for it to take place in a physical form.

There are also benefits to the cancellation as the media forum and technical forum will now take place online. I feel that, given the fact that there are no other events like this, years ago they should have started to record them or even consider to have a livestream. In the past they would always only share the powerpoints of a small part of the presentations that were given, which is more or less useless. When asked for further presentations, they would never reply. So I am really pleased that it will this time be possible to obtain the necessary information directly. 

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In the past they would always only share the powerpoints of a small part of the presentations that were given, which is more or less useless.

Yes, I have found that strange too. Sure, parts of the Technical Forum may be for "insiders" only, but the Media Forum?? Of course the presenters would not want their material to be published ahead of time, but once a presentation (or the WMF) is over, this could of course be available online, and thus for everybody.

Not sure what exactly the 2021 presentations will be like; maybe some prior accreditation will be required. Still, I hope they will be available to more people than those who in other years have a seat in the forum hall ...

Christian

[eurocoin]

The Media Forum will be produced in advance with the individual contributions linked by a moderator.  The mints and organisations that want to give a presentation have to record a video prior to the event, which will be used. Via the World Money Fair website anybody can watch the streaming of the Media Forum Friday, 29 January 2021- without having to log in or install additional software. After this event, both the complete recording and also all the contributions individually are available on demand via the World Money Fair website.

The Technical Forum will also be virtual this year. To be able to listen people have to register. The registration form will be available from 1 December 2020 on the World Money Fair website.

Then there will also be The Coin Forum, about which no further information is known yet.

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Great news as far as the Media Forum is concerned, thanks! As for the rest of the events, well, we'll see whether the registration will be open to anybody. Could be interesting, depending on the topic.

By the way, the World Money Fair has posted a couple of videos in its "WMF Talks" series. This one for example may be interesting for collectors who (a) want to learn about Islamic coins and (b) understand German. Stefan Heidemann, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Hamburg, about "Islamische Münzen":
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Or have a look at this page, where Heidemann writes about Islamic Numismatics ... in English.

Christian