The Brutus coins were struck to commemorate the assassination of Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BC: “Brutus stamped upon the coins that were being minted his own likeness and a cap and two daggers, indicating by this and by the inscription that he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland” – so wrote the Roman historian Cassius Dio nearly 250 years after the minting of these notable coins.

The Pepin the Short denarius, struck in Trier, possibly from the time of his elevation to the throne in 751, and thus one of the earliest Carolingian coins to be minted. In terms of monetary history, too, Pepin’s coins are tangible evidence of the changeover in dynastic rule from the Merovingians to the Carolingians. The coinage reform initiated by Pepin and completed by Charlemagne was to leave its mark throughout Europe.

The Sestroretsk ruble of 1771. Russian copper rubles of this type bore one of only two year dates, 1770 and 1771. Under the applicable copper standard, 16 rubles equalled one pud of 16.380 kg, ie the ruble had a nominal weight of 1,023 g. They were used to back the paper money that was simultaneously being issued in large quantities.

The Chinese 1 guan note from the second half of the 14th century. It was issued in the eighth year of the Hongwu era (1375 AD) and was the first paper money of the Ming dynasty. This note is the oldest item in the Bundesbank’s paper money collection.

An early US banknote from the 18th century. It depicts Hercules fighting the Nemean Lion, which is possibly an allusion to the War of Independence being fought at the time in Britain’s North American colonies. The value of the note is given in both dollars and pounds.

One of two known specimen banknotes of this type from the early days of the German Reich, which was founded in 1871. After more than half a century of many different paper banknotes in Germany, this 1,000 Mark note stands at the outset of a monetary unification that followed the political unification of 1871. The Reichsbank initially planned banknotes with nominal values of 100, 500 and 1,000 Marks, but only the 100 Mark note was actually printed. The “brown” 1,000 Mark note belongs to the first Reichsbank series and its design is based on Prussian models. It probably now exists only as a proof, and it was not until 1884 that this note, now with a different design, entered into circulation in large numbers.