THE NUMISMATIC COLLECTION OF THE ZAGREB ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM DONATIONS 1990-2010 The very first beginnings of the Zagreb Numismatic Collection can be traced down to 1828, which means before the formal foundation of the Croatian National Museum by the act of the Croatian Parliament in 1836 (DESPOT 1960 ; VINSKI-GASPARINI 1966). This collection has in fact a much longer history, starting from 1778, when the learned Zagreb Canon Balthasar Adam Kercselich de Korbavia bequeathed his coin collection to the Royal Academy of Law for the future museum. The Zagreb numismatic collection (MIRNIK 1990 ; cf. also Numismatique et Change, March 1995), grew chiefly by the means of gifts by numerous patriots. Of course, valuable numismatic material has always been bought, but compared with the donations, the purchased coins and medals are well behind in number, and sometimes in their value. In the fifties and sixties of the 19th c., still while the Museum was run by the Imperial and Royal Major Mijat Sabljar, such gifts were regularly made public in daily newspapers, and both Sabljar and his successors meticulously registered all the presented numismatic material in copybooks, even before it was catalogued into inventories. When Don Šime Ljubić began publishing his periodical Viestnik narodnoga zemaljskoga muzeja u Zagrebu (Journal of the National Territorial Museum in Zagreb ; 1870), and later its successor Viestnik Hrvatskoga arkeologičkoga družtva (Journal of the Croatian Archaeological Society ; 1879), the acquisitions for all the museum collections were regularly published (LUETIĆ 2001). This was also the case with the Numismatic Collection. The many collaborators and representantives throughout the region also contributed to the Museum's massive enrichment. As our aim is not to list all the donations and donors from the very beginnings of the Museum – this would be an immense task – we must concentrate on the happenings during a more recent period between 1945 and 1990.