Harvard's Ferguson Praises `Ascent of Money' as Markets Plunge

Niall Ferguson, a canny chronicler of financial history, knows a thing or two about market timing. Sellers have sliced more than $10 trillion off global stock- market value this month, the U.S. is mired in its worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, and hedgehog Andrew Lahde has shut his fund, telling investors, ``Goodbye and good luck.'' So what does Ferguson do? He publishes ``The Ascent of Money,'' an upbeat account of finance from Mesopotamia to McMansion. His thesis: ``Money is the root of most progress.'' After that windup, you might expect me to trash his book. Alas, I can't. Ferguson,...

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Austria witnesses New Gold Rush

Austrian Philharmonic Gold CoinsThe financial crisis is prompting people to look for safer forms of investment than stocks and shares.The interest in gold coins is so great that many of the world's major mints are struggling to keep up with demand, including the Austrian Mint, which produces the Vienna Philharmonic - one of the best-selling bullion coins worldwide. Sales of Vienna Philharmonic gold coins have gone up by more than 230% since last year. Kerry Tattersall, the director of marketing at the mint, says production has gone into overdrive. "We are running at present something like three shifts on all of the machines, on the presses, producing...

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The 1910 S Ten Centavos: Truth or Dare!

The 1910 San Francisco Mint Ten CentavosIt had been more than two decades since the 1910 San Francisco Mint Ten Centavos was published that if somebody would have found it, the collector would have paid a great sum to have the fabled coin. The 1910 S is one of the famous numismatic pieces that had a very colorful background. Almost a century and there is still no confirmed and graded specimen had ever surfaced except for those 1918 S that were with altered dates to look like the 1910 S. Luckily, I was able to meet the person who claimed that he possesses the most intriguing coin in Philippine numismatic history. He don’t want to tell his...

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The Flora and Fauna Patterns, Errors, and Trial Strikes Part 2

1994 Fifty Centavos (Small Flora And Fauna) Struck In BronzeHere is another fifty centavos of the same denomination which just like its bigger version is also being suspected as a trial piece or a pattern since there were no bronze planchets produced for Philippine coins during that time. The governments intention of reducing the production or minting cost of coins and at the same time reduced the metal content of coins resulted to the smaller version of the Flora and Fauna series. The designs were similar only that the newer twenty-five centavos and fifty centavos have reeded edges and of course the color of the fifty centavos planchets were...

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Collecting Coin is Fun?

When I started out collecting coins, most people thought that I had a weird hobby. Since, I always spent a portion of my allowance on coins, my parents would even think that I was wasting my time and coin collecting was detrimental. I was aware that I was the only one even in my class who has such passion for coins but i really don't know what made me kept happy whenever I add a piece of penny or a couple of change found from a "balikbayan" neighbors "pasalubong" to my collection. I felt excited whenever I visit a local coin shop or an antique shop to glance at some of the displays and always told myself that I would buy one in the future after i had asked the owner how much the price of that piece would be. I stopped collecting coins for a while when I reached college. The schedule...

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