In Britain, George III set a fine example, and his interest in coins was shared by his personal surgeon, Dr William Hunter, whose wide-ranging collections, including coins and medals, were the nucleus of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, opened in 1807.
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The collections formed by his brother, Dr John Hunter and their contemporary, Sir Hans Soane, formed the basis of the numismatic collections in the British Museum.
Britain is unusual in having several great institutional collections, including those in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, as well as the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh.
Elsewhere, large and all-embracing collections are housed in the Bibliothèque National in Paris and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Among more recent monarchs who had an abiding passion for coins were King Carol of Romania and Prince Rainier of Monaco, but King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy was a lifelong numismatist, whose studies and scholarly writings on the subject are still widely respected. His magnificent collection is now in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome.
Some of the greatest collectors of more recent times were Americans, such as the pharmaceuticals magnate Eli K Lilly and the Texan tycoon Nelson Bunker Hunt, who famously tried to corner the world silver market back in the 1970s.
The late Mary Norweb was arguably the world’ s leading female numismatist. The sale of her incomparable collections in the United States during the 1980s was spread over many auctions.
Significant names in Australia include the Quartermaster, Pratley Nicholson and Vort- Ronald collections, while the Australian coin collection at the Melbourne Museum is described as the most important of its kind in the world.
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