THE FORTS VISIT SCOTLAND'S NUMISMATIC MUSEUMS

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V18 2015 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 18, Number 25, June 21, 2015, Article 19

In response to an emailed invitation to a meeting near Pittsburgh of the Pennsylvania Association of Numismatists (PAN), Tom Fort responded:

As some of you know I am presently a bit out of town and shall not be able to make this month's PAN meeting. However, I do have a suggestion. On the 26th I shall be again in Edinburgh and Gosia and I found a great place to eat -The Auld 100- a pub and restaurant located in the new town. Why don't we all meet there instead?

I can invite Dr. Lynday McGill, the keeper of medieval antiquities at the National Museum of Scotland. Afterwards we could prevail upon her to give us tour through their massive exhibit on Scottish coins. Once we are finished there we could go to the Bank of Scotland Museum on the Mound and see their galleries of Scottish coins and paper money. All you have to do is be here by then. So instead of going where we usually go, let's try something different. I'll see you all at the NMS on the 26th.

While Tom was slaving through numerous trays of Scottish coins in the National Museum, Annamaria and I took a wonderful three hour walking tour of Edinburgh filled with history and great stories of kings, rebellions, scientific discoveries and ground breaking inventions of Scots. Inspired by our tour guide we went to see two exhibits on early people and beginnings of Scotland, and on the Kingdom of Scots.

Tired and dragging our feet we stopped at the Bank of Scotland museum. It fairly new, less than 10 years old, and it is known as Museum on the Mound (MoM). It is small but fantastically rich and has seven display rooms covering the history of the Bank as an financial institution and its building, history of money and money making, security from safe, fraud, crime to building societies and following the dream of house owning to life insurance.

They have great displays of paper money and coins of all Scottish kings. I must have been exhausted with all this abundance of information because my brain did not want to process everything I read so I spend a few minutes staring at the introductory display case pondering why there was a bottle of whisky there? But everything there was eye pleasing so even though I could not find answer to the why question, it looked good!

They have a case of one million pounds in £20 notes to illustrate the mighty presence of money. Very cool. The website does not have enough, we have to visit the museum to appreciate it fully. I highly recommend it.