Numismatic Sub-Collection

History of the Sub-Collection

This is one of the smaller sub-collections of the museum. It includes medals, badges, plaques, coins, hop tokens and serf labour tokens, but also templates and coin stamping dies. A vast majority of medals and plaques in this sub-collection are from lands belonging to the former Czechoslovakia, with only a small part of a foreign origin. The collection also includes several items which are not connected with agriculture, mostly medals with generally rural motifs or portraits of important personalities. It is not known when exactly the museum started to build its numismatic collection. Numismatic items started to appear in the register in 1927 and the first medals were acquired in 1929. Some medals were also donated to the museum. In 1930, the museum received donations of medals from other institutions and organisations, in particular from the Ministry of Agriculture, a Union of Czech Economic Societies and a Central Economic Society for Silesia, as well as from various branches of the Agricultural Union. In the years that followed, the museum had received further donations from official societies such as a society for the brewing industry, from the regional headquarters of beekeeping societies, and the like. Gradually, it also started receiving larger contributions from various local institutions and organisations, such as the Farmers’ Sugar Refinery in Němčice, a municipal office in Nerejov, Town Museum in Pardubice, etc. The Museum of Agriculture started to systematically develop a numismatic collection in 1930, which means that since that date, it also purchased some relevant items. In 1956, the sub-collection was significantly enriched by a transfer of a collection of medals from the Ministry of Agriculture, which included 132 items. One of the main collecting trends in numismatics are medals with agricultural subjects.