THE TREASURE OF AMERSFOORT

Aaron Oppenheim writes:

In 1894, with the rebuilding of the house of Anna van der Heijden in the Nieuwstraat a special discovery was made, which consisted of one big and two small jars with gold- and silver coins. The big jar contained 12.800 kilograms gold coins; the two small ones had together 9.900 kilograms of silver coins; the gold coins were all undamaged, the silver ones were mostly oxidized.

They called the specialist Jacob Schulman. He immediately saw that there were a few very exceptional pieces. The oldest coin was from 1504 and the youngest from 1558. So the treasure must have been hidden for about 330 years. On the 26th of February the coins were temporarily moved to the Royal Cabinet of coins, medals and engraved stones in The Hague, where they were described and on July 18, 1894, they were sold in Amsterdam.

Jacob Schulman came originally from Hilversum and his hobby was assembling coins from the then Dutch-Indies, and medals. From his hobby he made a profession. His big specialties were Eastern coins and coins from Portugal/Brazil and the rest of South-America. In 1880 he published his first catalogue of Dutch coins. His numismatics workshop was in the Langestraat (now no. 28), corner Lieve Vrouwenstraat. In 1889 he held his first coin-auction in his own name. Five years later he sold a big part of the Amersfoort coin-treasure. Because of all these activities, the place in Amersfoort became too small, and it was moved to Amsterdam in 1902, where his sons came into the business, they became notorious far beyond the Dutch borders.

An interesting detail to report is that in addition to his work Jacob Schulman was the secretary (from 1882-1883) of the archaeological society Flehite from 1882-1883.

To read the complete article, see:
Jewish life in Amersfoort (https://www.dutchjewry.org/amersfoort/jewish_life_in_amersfoort.shtml)

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