The collection contains a total of 13,300 coins and medals. The main focus is on the coinage of the archbishopric and the city of Magdeburg. Other parts of the collection include coins from ancient Greece to the Migration Period, medieval coins from many German and foreign mints, as well as old German coins. Coins from the German Empire, the German colonies, the Weimar Republic and the GDR round off the collection of German coins. The foreign coins are followed by a collection of thematic medals. The last section is a collection of medals categorised by the artists who created them. The coin collection is joined by a paper money collection (2,280 items), which includes, for example, war emergency money, banknotes from the inflation period, emergency money from municipalities and companies, and “prisoner-of-war camp money”.
The collection can look back on a history of over a hundred years. It was originally formed from the collections of the Magdeburg Art Association and the city, which were handed over to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum Magdeburg when it opened in 1906. It grew rapidly through further generous donations and purchases and, before all the pieces were moved to the Neustassfurt salt mine for safekeeping during air raids in 1942, it comprised around 40,000 coins and medals. In April 1945, the majority of the collection was destroyed by robbery and arson. In the post-war decades, new acquisitions were added through donations and purchases, including 3,000 medals in 1964 from the dissolved Technical College of Applied Art in Magdeburg.
