3 December 2022 - THE COIN CABINET of DRESDEN

 

THE COIN CABINET

 of 

DRESDEN

G'day folks,

Known as the "Coin Cabinet of Dresden," this museum houses over 300,000 currency-related artifacts.  

The hobby of coin collecting has been practiced since antiquity. This type of collecting was not only to accumulate great wealth but also to display an appreciation of the intricacies of engraving art. These collections of coins were often stored in large wooden cabinets during the post-Renaissance years, and many national collections in Europe are still referred to as “coin cabinets” by modern numismatists.

 

Founded circa 1530, the Münzkabinett, or Coin Cabinet of Dresden is one of Europe’s largest-scale numismatic collections, as well as one of the oldest museums in Germany. Currently, over 300,000 items call the cabinet home—from ancient coinage to minting equipment and historic documents, only a tenth of which are on permanent display.

The public portion of the coin cabinet is housed in the museum at Dresden Castle and consists of coins, banknotes, medals, seals, counterfeits, primitive forms of money, and minting equipment from the ancient Greco-Roman world to the modern European Union. These exhibits focus especially on the monetary history of Saxony and Germany in general.

 

In addition to research facilities and five centuries’ worth of artifacts, the Münzkabinett also possesses legal claim to any hoard of coins excavated on the Saxon territory, whose soil is rich in such hidden treasure. Coin hoards are now worth more than their bullion values when melted down, as they provide a good glimpse into the past. 

15 November 2021 - PENCIL SHARPENER MUSEUM IN OHIO

 

PENCIL SHARPENER 

MUSEUM  IN OHIO

G'day folks,

People collect all sorts of things, but pencil sharpeners? Yes, it took more than 20 years and a sharp eye for one man to assemble this quirky collection. 

Collecting pencil sharpeners and assembling them into a museum dedicated to pencil sharpeners is a kind of eccentric thing to do. Step inside the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum in Logan, Ohio and it somehow seems perfectly admirable.

The Pencil Sharpener Museum is the result of over 20 years of collecting by Ohio local, Rev. Paul A. Johnson. His wife gave him a couple of car-shaped sharpeners in the late 1980s, and his zeal for collecting was born. The sharpeners lived in a pre-fab shed in Johnson’s backyard, growing over time to over 3400 at the time he passed away in 2010. His family was holding onto them when salvation for the whole collection – and the shed – came calling in 2011. It was the Hocking Hills Welcome Center, happy to take on the job of collection custodian, and everything was moved over to their site in South Logan.  

 Just like any museum, the collection has been meticulously cataloged and preserved in protective cases. There are sharpening cars, toys, Garfields, Mickeys, Tweetybirds, tractors, airplanes, trains, U.S. presidents, panda bears. There are old ones and new ones, and some shelf-mounted classics you generally only see at the library. Try to be sharp on your puns though—the staff has heard them all.

Clancy's comment: There ya go, folks. Who'd have ever guessed?

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25 January 2021 - A VARIETY OF THINGS THAT FOLKS COLLECT

 

A VARIETY OF THINGS 

THAT FOLKS COLLECT

G'day folks,

Some of us enjoy bowling or going to the beach. It’s safe to say most of us have visited a hotel room a few times throughout life. But do we have actual proof of it? This might sound like a strange question, but you’ll soon understand what I’m getting at. The photo collection below depicts some of the most impressive, unique, and even random collections people keep. From a pyramid of bowling balls to a neatly arranged collection of hotel room keys, it’s all there. And those are not even the most surprising ones. Take a look, it might even inspire you to start your own collection.

Clancy's comment: I used to collect t-shirts from around the world. Now, I wear them. Just sayin' ...

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20 October 2017 - SWEDEN’S COLLECTION OF AMERICAN CARS

SWEDEN’S COLLECTION

 OF AMERICAN CARS

G'day folks,

This post relates to more cars that have been collected and deserted. The “Raggare” movement, which emerged from a post-war youth counterculture mainly in Sweden and parts of Norway, is known for its undying love of vintage American hot rod cars and 1950s pop culture.

Deep in the Swedish woods, there lies an army of more than a thousand abandoned cars, decaying since the 1950s. The land was once owned by two brothers who opened a scrapyard business for cars left behind by U.S servicemen in Sweden and around Europe after WW2. Disassembling the cars and selling them off to Norway for parts was big business in Sweden at the time. Norway had been left a poor country after the war and car parts were near impossible to get. Junkyards popped up all along the Swedish border and Norwegians were their best customers.

The brothers who owned Båstnäs lived on the land and continued selling abandoned American cars up until the 1980s. Today you can still the see the forgotten cars strewn around the land, filling the fields surrounding the brothers’ two dilapidated homes.

While many Swedes are demanding the country’s junkyards be removed and the forests cleaned up, ironically, environmentalists are pleading for them to stay, arguing that wildlife have made nests in the automobile remains. And if they get their way, the cars will remain until they’re dust.

“Ragga” roughly means “to pick up girls” in Swedish and they were known to do just that; pick up impressionable young women in one town and find new ones in the next, having their “bad boy” way with them in the back seat of the car along the way.

Today, the Raggare have quite a different reputation, met with amusement or only mild disapproval by modern mainstream society. There’s been some controversy about the raggare seen waving the Confederate flags while driving their old muscle cars, but to quote an article published last year by Jalopnik about the car culture, “like most cultural icons, the Confederate flag doesn’t translate fully when its taken overseas … and in Sweden, it’s both a symbol of America and rebellion, and not of anything with scary undertones.”

Now,  check out these pearlers.

Clancy's comment: Amazing, eh? So much steel, and so many spare parts for some keen enthusiast who is restoring one of these icons.

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