house of coins museum - bogota, colombia
DESCRIPTION
The Coin Museum is definitely one of Bogota's best, most original museums. Here's a quick overview tour of just some of what's in store for visitors.TRANSCRIPT
HOUSE of COINS MUSEUM
Bogota, Colombia
During the Colonial Period of Colombia and other developing
regions, a way of exchanging value in trading needed to be established
Barter and Gold were soon widely accepted
Bags of gold dust or gold nuggets were difficult to
measure and not precise in size or weight …
… so small stamped ingots or coins were produced to make
controlling the weight or amount easier to
disperse when trading
an early period stamped gold coin
As coin minting presses became larger …
… with more precise minting dies and …
… greater sophistication …
… likewise, coins became more sophisticated with standardized text and images denoting their origin, weight and the government they represented
Coin minting die design from 1762
Coin minting presses continued to evolve …
… becoming larger, faster, more powerful and more spophisticated with passing decades
Governments produced standardized weights to verify coin shipment quantity. This is a 12.5 kilogram weight from 1629 Spain
For transporting large amounts of gold and metal coins aboard ships or across land, the three-lock strong box was invented for safe keeping. Each key was held by a different person so no one person could open the box
Alonso Turrillo de Yerba, Army Captain, engineer, and financier was one such person so entrusted by the Spanish government
Even more sophisticated safes developed in the 1800s
By the mid-1800s to early 1900s, safes featured multiple combination locks, and all metal, fire proof construction for storing gold, stamped coins and the dies used to produce them.
Now you can relax in the Coin Museum courtyard
To learn more, take the tour
Photos and presentation by: Prof. Larry M. Lynch [email protected]