World Money Fair (Berlin) 2019

@ma-shops : Turns out that yes, I will be there - Berlin on Sat/Sun, with a WMF visit on Saturday. (My trip to the US will be two weeks later.) So I can actually say Hello auf deutsch.

For those who don't know about the World Money Fair: The WMF (in Berlin, every year in late Jan/early Feb) is the world's largest coin fair. Not sure what criteria they use but it sure is an amazing mix of a big coin show and an "industry forum" where mints present their products and issue schedules, where minting technology is discussed, Künker does a special WMF auction, Krause awards the Coin of the Year prizes there ...

The WMF catalog for next year has not been published yet. But the show will be on 1-3 February 2019, at the Estrel Convention Center. The auction and the Technical Forum will be on Jan 31, the Media Forum is on Feb 1.

Christian

 

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Bucket list item, tough time of year right now.

 

Ah, one of these days then.

The WMF website is here by the way. In the "Fair Info 2019" menu there is a "Fair Catalog" item which currently shows you the 2018 catalog, in English and German.

Christian

 

Realistically, the year 2020 looks like a candidate. Maybe '21. I was for quite a while a regular attendee at Photokina in Koln. German trade shows are unsurpassed!

 

Ahhh good to know - perfect planning I think the upcoming fair will be interesting scheduled. We will meet there! Maybe some others of the forum here will be around. Who knows... and for all who cannot attend but interested we @chrisild can open a thread and keep our friends posted.

 

The WMF 2019 catalog can be downloaded here:
https://www.worldmoneyfair.de/wmf/en/fair-catalog/

Christian

 

I got the Kunker catalogue, many great coins. Bad timing though, you have CNG/Triton XXII/ Stacks/ Heritage/ NY Sale.

 

Maybe that timing is why the US Mint is one of the few major mints that do not participate in the World Money Fair. Then again, the WMF is always at a time of the year (last January or first February weekend) when it often is still freezing cold in Berlin. And I suppose the time is fine with many mints that present their annual programs there.

Christian

 

Oops, I spoke too soon. The US Mint will actually be at the WMF this year - with a presentation at the Technical Forum ...



... but also with a booth. Cool!



Christian

 

Christian,

Will the South Koreans be there? They always have been for past Berlin WMF shows.

If you wouldn't mind, could you please ask them a question for me:

Where can a South Korean coin researcher find the yearly mintages, per-year, per-denomination, for South Korea's circulation coins going back to 1966 (the first year coins were made in Korea)?

This is one key piece of information that I am missing from "official" Bank of Korea/Komsco sources. They do not publish this information.

To put the Koreans in context, attached here are screenshots the webpages of five countries that publish, online, their yearly per-coin mintages.

 

As far as I can tell, Poongsan will have a booth at the WMF, but they are a manufacturer of blanks. And the Korea Stamp Corporation, except they are from North Korea, I think ...

Christian

 

Just got out there & am pooped. But it was once again a very interesting show, and well attended too as far as I know. Will share a few photos tomorrow night when I am back at a screen with a reasonable size. Smartphone, fat fingers, y'know ...

Christian

 

I was also at the show and I have now coin-overdose. I'll try to share my experinece whenever I have recovered from the "hunt"...

 

https://moneditis.com/2019/01/24/world-money-fair-2019/

https://moneditis.com/2019/01/30/kunker-en-la-wmf-2019/

 

It was really a good and interesting exhibition... from A-Z was everything there to explore. Good stuff to see and nice people I met! @chrisild it was a pleasure to meet you, hopefully next year for another coffee. I am still amazed by “our ideas” for the younger numismatic generation... who knows, maybe I will bring up our idea to the important people one day
How was your journey back home? We are still deiving...

 

As promised few posts earlier, my first impressions.
The WMF Berlin'19 was the first large coin show I have visited. Of course I have been on numerous small local coin shows, but never on big one. And it was huge (although, to be honest, I expected even bigger one).

I was able to participate two days, Friday afternoon and full day on Saturday. I didn't know how much time would it take to go through everything, so I spent the first afternoon only to get the rough idea what's on sale, what are the price ranges and where should I spend my time on the next day. So it took me only two hours to visit all the booths and tables. I reserved second day for "digging" - I went through most of the albums, cabinets, jars, boxes, bins, etc. So, long story short - now it took over 5 hours to visit all the selected booths and tables. It was probably not the best strategy, I saw numerous empty slots in albums and probably missed some purchase oportunities, but doesn't matter - I can be smarter next time.
To my total surprise, on the second day I discovered, that on the first day I had missed one entire hall! There were no coins, there were coin making equipment, but boy, that was interesting! I was able to see inside the minting machines, I was able to see how the multicolor coins and medals are made, there were planchet polishing tools, etc. Engineer's and coin nerd's heaven!

So, did I get anything? I'm happy to say yes. I got bunch of pens, few candies, 17 coins and 3 medals (all medals were freebies, so thank you Lithuanian Mint, Monnaie de Paris and Morlock). Out of these 17 coins, only 3 to 6 are actually the ones which go to my main collection (Estonian and Tsarist era Russian coins), others were just something I liked. I actually planned to spend much more (I collected money for WMF to be well funded ), but the competition on the stuff I like is very tough, its hard to get something new at reasonable price. So I'm happy with the results!

The only downside with the WMF was, that I was so concentrated on coins, that I basically forgot to drink anything, was totally dehydrated and ended up with headache on both days (or maybe it was the shine of the gold which blinded me and gave me migrene? ).

Anyway, some of the stuff I got:
Morlock medal


Estonia 5 marka 1922

Soviet Russia 1 rouble 1921


And junk-bin find. Apparently Hungary 5/10 krajczar 1882


PS! The good news are, that my coin overdose is over, I already browsed the ebay and scored!

 

Got back from Berlin last night, terribly tired, so the report had to wait. But I am happy to see that others went to, and wrote about, the World Money Fair as well.



The WMF is on three days - or six if you include the auctions and workshops "around" it. I only went on Saturday, and had a good time. As for the photos, I did not take any at the booths and tables of the dealers; that is usually frowned upon, especially with customers around. So here we have a few mint booths:


The Austrian Mint (this year's special guest) with a, surprise, alpine scenery.


The Royal Dutch Mint. Not really "royal" - that is an honorary title that various companies have - and not really Dutch - it is now owned by a Belgian company - but they had (and sold) both coins and medals.


This I found somewhat peculiar. Big, partly golden, but what the heck ...?


Well, it was a poster advertising a new Liechtenstein coin. And since LI does not do that very often, they needed something attention grabbing, I suppose ...


This grabbed the attention of more visitors, I think. The Berlin Mint (one of the five German mints that also make coins for DE) had a booth with a coin press that visitors could operate, and then take their self-made medal home.

(To be continued)

 

The Mint of Poland ...


... with impressive architecture; I saw mostly medals there. (Side note: Some of the mints that participate in the World Money Fair actually sell coins to visitors - others merely use the WMF as a showcase, grmpf.)


Even the US Mint made it to the World Money Fair this year. They advertised the Innovators Coins program for example, and also sold coin sets etc.


Here is a Moon Landing dollar. Now please do not believe that my phone camera takes excellent images. This piece was easy to photograph ... size matters, y'know.


Taken for size comparison purposes only.

Met a few people at the show, such as various members of a German coin forum (we have an annual get-together, on the WMF Saturday at noon), and had a very pleasant conversation with somebody you may well know from Coin Talk: Below is Sarah @ma-shops with yours truly. Briefly saw her on my way in, later we had a little more time; she is nice in case you did not know.



And then I pondered - should I go to the WMF again the next day? Well, I also wanted to see the "150 Years Berlin Coin Cabinet" exhibition in central Berlin. So I went out in order to get my Faille autographs (see next post), later went back inside (and somehow missed Sarah that time) and looked around some more.

(Stay tuned ...)

 

"Looked"? These days I do not buy many coins (in fact, hardly any) for various reasons, but nevertheless find them interesting or even fascinating. So a major show like this one, where many mints, lots of dealers and coin related industries/businesses are present, is definitely enticing ...


The French Mint would give away Simone Veil €2 coins (single pieces or rolls) at face value - and you could even get their free (!) "World Money Fair 2019" medal.


Yes, these things resembles euro notes. But why the zero?


Because they are private issues that do not have any cash value. At the WMF, I got an autograph from and briefly talked to Richard Faille, the man who created this series of souvenir notes. These are quite popular here, also because with regard to various design and security features they resemble our banknotes, and are even made by a company (Oberthur, FR) which also prints actual euro notes. Faille's signature on the left is a real one; his small sig on the right is printed.


The obverse is issue specific, the reverse is always the same for a year, featuring various prominent sites in Europe.


This is Mr Faille. Now in my opinion the series suffers to some extent from the plethora of issues even "for" non-euro countries. So I asked him about that, and he has a point: A collector should always focus on something- regions, themes, etc., like what you do when you collect coins ...

The next day I took photos at museums, so this is it for the World Money Fair. But I will show you some more images.

 

The next day I did see the Coin Cabinet sesquicentennial exhibition at the Bode Museum, part of what they called the "Museum Island".



If the name of the museum rings a bell with anybody - yes, that is the place where that Canadian gold beast was stolen. This is also "covered" in the exhibition:


This temporary exhibition was quite small, just one room, but its focus was on the founders and donors anyway. The permanent coin exhibition was a welcome enhancement.


Here is a medal that commemorates the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Eastern states joining the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990. The gate was open until the Wall was built in 1961, and was opened again in Nov-1989 when the GDR regime came to its end. So making it open on this (large) medal is a good idea, I think.


Gold coins from Brandenburg-Prussia.


Byzantine gold coins from roughly between the 5th and 12th century. Note that making dome shaped pieces is not a 21c innovation ...


This is a glass window (Switzerland, 1565) showing the minting process at that time.