Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Metal Coinage and Money Substitutes
The core of the Collection B is formed by the approximately 2,500-piece collection of the museum’s founder, Count Ferenc Széchényi, which originally focused specifically on coins and commemorative medals of Hungarian relevance. Within this material, the coins provided the basis for the development of today’s B Collection, which has expanded significantly over the more than two centuries since its foundation.
The number of Hungarian coins now totals around 70,000 pieces, tracing the history of Hungarian minting from the period of state formation—beginning with the Lancea Regis type—through to the present day, including recent emission series of the Hungarian National Bank.
As the collection expanded, its collecting scope also broadened, and today it includes a substantial quantity of foreign coinage. These items derive primarily from Austrian and German territories, but the collection also contains numerous Czech and Polish coins recovered from finds within the territory of historical Hungary, as well as coins originating largely from private collections from the South Slavic states and the Romanian principalities.
Special mention should be made of the Far Eastern collection group, which includes extensive series illustrating the history of Chinese coinage, as well as a significant collection of Islamic coins. This collection unit also encompasses objects used as proto-monetary forms, such as cowrie shells, bronze bracelets, and silver lumps, alongside unusually shaped—primarily Eastern—means of payment, including knife and spade money and porcelain money.
The coin collection is complemented by a wide range of associated objects. These include a series of several hundred coin dies, comprising dies for Hungarian and foreign medieval and early modern coins and commemorative medals, as well as plaster and bronze plates used in modern minting processes. In addition, the collection includes coin weights, play money, counting tokens (jetons), bridge tokens, and other objects either shaped like coins or used as monetary substitutes.
Contact Dr. Csaba Tóth, toth.csaba@hnm.hu and Dr. Enikő Kovács, kovacs.eniko@hnm.hu
The first Hungarian coin was issued by King Stephen I (1000–1038) on the occasion of his coronation, in accordance with the Western European denarius system. On the obverse, the principal symbol of the country’s sovereignty—the royal lance held by the ruler—is prominently displayed and is explicitly identified by the legend Lancea regis (“the king’s lance”). The reverse legend, Regia civitas (“royal city”), refers in a figurative sense to the Christian Kingdom of Hungary founded by Stephen.
The coin’s imagery is based on the so-called Carolingian church type, widely used in Western European coinage. The Hungarian engraver, however, transformed the original rigid and static architectural representation by drawing on the formal vocabulary of Conquest-period goldsmithing.
At present, approximately fifty examples of the first Hungarian coin are known worldwide, forty of which are preserved in the Coins Collection of the Hungarian National Museum.
True curiosities of Hungarian numismatic history are coins struck by the coin dies of a known denomination but executed in a different metal. Examples include silver-struck versions of gold florins, as well as gold coins produced using the dies of silver denarii. A particularly remarkable specimen is the gold-struck version of the silver garas of King Matthias I (Hunyadi). Weighing the equivalent of two gold florins (6.99 g), this unique coin entered the Hungarian National Museum from the Festetics Collection in Keszthely. Only a single example of this issue is known worldwide.
The guldiner, a heavy silver coin regarded as the forerunner of the thaler and the most successful denomination of the early modern period—one that also lent its name to an entire era of monetary history—first appeared in Tyrol in 1486. In Hungary, guldiners were struck only once, during the reign of King Wladislaus II, between 1499 and 1506. The guldiner issued at Körmöcbánya (today: Kremnica, Slovakia) in 1499 is also notable as the first Hungarian coin bearing a date.
Thaler minting in Hungary was introduced in 1553 at Körmöcbánya (today: Kremnica, Slovakia), on the basis of authorisation by the Diet. On the reverse of the earliest Hungarian thalers, characteristic elements of Hungarian coin iconography—most notably the figure of the Madonna and the Hungarian coat of arms—still played a prominent role; over time, however, their significance diminished. The first Hungarian silver thaler, known as the so-called “angel thaler” because of the two winged angel heads depicted on the reverse, is considered an exceptional rarity.
The most valuable currencies in the medieval and early modern periods were the gold florins, also known as ducats, weighing approximately 3.5 g, for which both fractional and multiple issues were produced. On the obverse of the hundredfold ducat of Ferdinand III, struck in Prague in 1629 and weighing 350.5 g, the denomination was indicated by a later countermark. Such multiple ducats were, of course, not struck for everyday circulation but rather served gift-giving and representational purposes.
The two characteristic features of the coin minting of the Principality of Transylvania, the issuing of high-value coins and the willingness to mint coins of special shapes, reached their peak during the reign of the last prince, Mihály Apafi. In addition to the tenfold ducats (1 ducat = 3.5 g), which were no longer a rarity in the period, gold coins of 50 and 100 times the weight were issued in his name alone. Among these, the unique 77.8 mm diameter gold coin of fifty times the weight of a ducat (172.67 g), which was minted in 1677 in Fogaras, is exceptional, known only once in the world. The fifty-fold ducat, which depicts the Prince on the obverse and the unified Apaf-Transylvanian coat of arms on the reverse, traces its history back over a hundred years. In the 19th century it was kept in the Koburg Collection, and next appeared in England after the Second World War. In 1972 it was auctioned off and passed to a Japanese collector and then back to Switzerland. In 1977, almost 300 years after it was made, the Hungarian National Museum acquired it from the Swiss-based auction house Bank Leu for a quarter of a million Swiss francs.
The only coin bearing a portrait of Ferenc II Rákóczi was minted in 1707 at Kolozsvár (today: Cluj, Romania), when he held the title of Prince of Transylvania. Only three specimens of this coin were produced. Two were sent to the prince as presentation pieces, but he received them with disapproval. He therefore ordered that the third specimen also be sent to him, that no further coins be struck, and that the coin dies be destroyed.
In the Early Modern Period, parallel with the spread of increasingly larger and thicker coins, secondary screw-mounted coins appeared in Europe. These were sawn apart and fitted with screw threads, allowing the two halves to be separated and rejoined. The interior of such screw-open coins could be used to conceal various items, including secret messages; for this reason, they are also known as “spy coins.” From the period of the anti-Habsburg War of Independence dates a subsequently modified, screw-open 3-kreuzer copper coin, on the two inner surfaces of which the portraits of two iconic figures of the War of Independence—József Bem and Sándor Petőfi—were painted.
In the United States, mining companies also issued their own coinage. The company of Samuel Wass, of Hungarian origin, had gold dollars minted in California in four denominations (5, 10, 20, and 50 dollars). In 1855, Samuel Wass sent a complete set of these issues to the Hungarian National Museum.
During the 133 days of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, issuing an independent system of metal coinage proved impossible. Nevertheless, coin design proposals intended to fit within the existing korona system have survived. A true rarity among these is a bronze pattern coin denominated 10 korona, created by the renowned medal artist Fülöp Ö. Beck.
