Collecting in Hungary

I spent the last few weeks in Hungary, so I couldn’t miss the chance of getting some more harder to get Hungarian coins. I had many plans, but only a few happened, but I was still able to add to my collection.

During my trip, I already wrote about the presentation I attended organized by the Hungarian Numismatic Society.

I also had a chance to visit my favorite coin store, and picked up a few coins from the 1700’s, and some from this century which was still missing from my collection. Of course, it is not yet complete, but I’ll keep working on it.

I got the last missing silver piece from 1948, the Tancsics 20 Forint, and I also found the 1967 silver 2 Forint which was missing from the series. In 1966 and 67, the mint set included a silver 1, 2 and 5 Forint, which cannot be found anywhere else. There was only 5000 of each of the two mint sets. Interestingly, I found the 5 Forint in our local store in Ohio in the 50 Cent bucket. The same coin sells for over $10 otherwise, which I still think is underpriced. These are the days I wish I could see, I could get so much more out of those coin buckets.

The National Museum just opened a Thaler exhibit while I was in Hungary which I wanted to attend. I also called the director of the coin exhibit, and he promised to give me a hands-on tour which I could enjoy, because all of the objects are behind glass. The morning the exhibit opened, I got sick, and had to stay home for a couple of days, and then I didn’t have enough time to arrange for the special tour. I also missed the meeting of the Hungarian Coin Collector’s Society (rough translation), where I could have traded a bunch of coins. They meet on Tuesday afternoons, and none of the Tuesdays worked out for me. But it was great to learn about these groups, next time I hope to meet them, but in the meantime I’m thinking about signing up for their membership to start receiving their publications.

Numismatically, as well, it was a great trip, I certainly didn’t do as much as I originally planned, but it was more important to spend time with friends and family. If it was another country, I would have made more effort to squeeze more collecting into the plan, but given that I show up in Hungary regularly, I don’t feel that I missed out on anything. Of course, as always, I came home with a huge bag of pocket change from three countries, but I didn’t get many that I don’t have yet, but it meant a bunch of new coins for my daughter.