From April 29 to May 1, 2011 a Dark Age Festival took place at Bad S�ckingen in Southern Germany. The organizers, the worldwide dominant traveling organization of festivals of this kind call themselves MPS, which stands for Middle Ages � Fantasy (German: Phantasie) � Spectacle.The response was incredible, which gives us a good reason to reflect, why the Middle Ages are so popular and why museums can't benefit a little bit more from this trend.

Of course there is a numismatic aspect of the Dark Ages Festival. They have created an own festival currency: the golden crown featuring "medieval" pictures like dog heads and logos.The festival currency can be swapped for euros at the moneychanger's table.

There are 5-euro, 2-euro, 1-euro and 1/2-euro crowns; and every year two new emissions are issued.This is important, as MPS wants to seduce their visitors to collect. Since 2009 these crowns have been on the market and they will stay until 2016. All visitors, who are able to show all issues at the end of this period will take part in a lottery. Their participation will cost a lot of money: one golden crown corresponds to one euro. If you collect all denominations of all issues for 8 years, this will be a substantial amount. And we shouldn't forget, that there will be a lot of collectors starting their collection, who will have forgotten it in 2016.

To read the complete article, see:Spectaculum: About Golden Crowns and odd disguises(www.coinsweekly.com/en/News/4?&id=583)