house of coins museum - bogota, colombia

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 proflmlynch@gmail.com