Beginnings of the Paper Money Collection of the Numismatic Cabinet of the National Museum in Krakow / Początki kolekcji pieniądza papierowego Gabinetu Numizmatycznego Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie

Barbara Zając, National Museum in Krakow

ORCID: 0000-0003-4731-5782

Beginnings of the Paper Money Collection of the Numismatic Cabinet of the National Museum in Krakow

Abstract: The collection of the Numismatic Cabinet of the National Museum in Krakow (NMK) contains ca. 21,000 paper money objects that performed or could have performed payment, credit or exchange functions. These include banknotes, vouchers, coupons, tickets, bills of exchange, stocks and bonds. As far as documentation relating to the receipt or purchase of the first objects is concerned, we have at our disposal the donation book of the first director of the Museum, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, dating from 1883 to 1900, the museum inventories from 1879 to 1900 and the later purchase catalogues. Unfortunately, due to a lack of detailed information such as the series number, we cannot always identify the specific objects in today’s collection. Some of them, known, for example, only from Łuszczkiewicz’s donation book, may not have been included in the museum collection at all due to their commonness and low collector value at the time. Such was the case with treasury notes, which today are among the most desirable Polish paper money.

The article highlights the different groups of objects donated to the Numismatic Cabinet of the NMK between 1884 and 1918. This text is only the first article in a larger series focusing on donors and individual donation of paper money at NMK.

Key words: paper money, Numismatic Cabinet, National Museum in Krakow, E. Hutten-CzapskiDOI:https://doi.org/10.52800/AJST.1.19.a14

Zając, B. 2024. “Beginnings of the Paper Money Collection of the Numismatic Cabinet of the National Museum in Krakow”, Notae Numismaticae – Zapiski Numizmatyczne 19: 255–281. DOI: https://doi.org/10.52800/AJST.1.19.a14