Since its humble beginnings in the late 1950s, the National Currency Collection (NCC) has acquired more than 130,000 economic artifacts from both private collections and institutional holdings. Today, the NCC’s material, which comes from around the world and spans four millennia, serves as the foundation for the Bank of Canada Museum. The museum displays about 1,400 artifacts – a little more than one per cent of the total collection – alongside interactive exhibits in downtown Ottawa. The NCC’s library also holds about 10,000 books, pamphlets, catalogues and journals. While only about 10 per cent of the NCC is currently available to view online, Bergeron expects the entire collection to be published on the museum website, bankofcanadamuseum.ca, “in the coming years. “The Bank of Canada Museum has an active acquisition budget that is earmarked for making acquisitions that will enhance the National Currency Collection,” said NCC curator David Bergeron, who has worked with the bank since 2002 but took on the lead curator role in 2019. “The downside to that is – especially since COVID – the markets have been kind of frothy. It’s hard to buy things, so we always try to find other ways of making acquisitions as well.” Continue reading →
A rare set of 1862 British Columbia gilt pattern coins acquired by the museum in 2017 are considered among ‘Canada’s most celebrated coins,’ according to then-curator Paul Berry.
