Collection of numismatic auctions catalogues

Since the middle of the 19th century, an enormous amount of numismatic objects has been published in the auction catalogues and stock-lists of international coin trading. The mass of this material exceeds the inventories of public collections by far. Therefore, serious numismatic research has to consider these publications as well.

Since the 1960s, our Department has been collecting catalogues of worldwide coin traders (including medals, tokens, decorations, stocks and bonds). We strive to compile a complete collection. However, there are still considerable gaps in some series – in particular, in the catalogues from the pre-war period. The more recent auction catalogues from Austria, Germany and Switzerland are almost complete. The collection of catalogues from other European countries is excellent, but still far from being complete. Regarding auction catalogues from outside Europe, there is still a lot of catching up to do. The collection of catalogues comprises around 31,100 catalogues (as of August 2018) and lists, stored in 200 metres of shelf. This makes it by far the largest collection of its kind in Austria.

We ask companies and private persons not to throw away current and old catalogues, but rather leave them to the Department. This way, we can guarantee the continuation of the collection and close the gaps in the older series of the collection. We use any duplicates to expand the Numismatische Zentralkartei (numismatic central card file), NZK or exchange them with other departments. Our catalogue collection is open to the public and is available to students, academics, collectors, and traders.

If you would like to leave some of your catalogues to us or use our catalogue collection or require any other information, please get in touch with our documentation assistant Elmar Fröschl.

Date – number of catalogues

2012-09-01: 22.700
2013-01-01: 23.400
2013-08-01: 25.000
2014-01-01: 26.000
2014-10-01: 27.000
2015-09-01: 28.200
2016-10-01: 29.500
2017-10-01: 30.400
2018-02-01: 30.750
2018-08-01: 31.100