MORE ON CUTBACKS AT HOLLAND'S GELDMUSEUM

I had read Christel Schollaardt's article when it first appeared in CoinsWeekly. In fact, I had met Ms. Schollaardt in August 2011 at the Geldmuseum on a day trip from Amsterdam. Acting as my tour guide, she took me on a tour around the building. The left side of the building acts as the museum, primarily concentrating on explaining how the central bank works. The right side of the building still functions as the Dutch Royal Mint, stamping out euro coins with The Netherlands reverse and coins for a number of other countries.

To my knowledge, the Geldmuseum is one of Holland's two museums that have significant numismatic collections open to the public; the other being the Tylers Museum in Haarlem, which I also visited during my stay in Amsterdam. Of the nine people who were unfortunately laid off, I met two of them: Christel Schollaardt, as head of the department, and Jan Pelsdonk, the database manager, who was also the numismatics curator at the Tylers Museum.

The Geldmuseum is located at the end of Leidseweg. A number of years ago, the city imbedded 43 large-scale coin replicas, from 1 cent to 2½ guilder in the sidewalk of virtually the entire length of the Leidseweg to the museum.

It is a shame that a prominent institution should be allowed to decay to this point. About a year ago, the Monnaie de Paris (Paris Mint Museum), located directly across from the Louvre on the Seine closed. Who will be next?

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: CUTBACKS AT THE UTRECHT GELDMUSEUM (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n06a22.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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