History146;s bank

Coins that his mother gave him every Diwali initiated young IT professional Nikhil Ranjan into numismatics. 8220;My mother is a history teacher and instead of gifting the usual Lakshmi-Ganesh coins...

Every Diwali, people bring out their collection of coins. But for some, this is a year-long obsession

Coins that his mother gave him every Diwali initiated young IT professional Nikhil Ranjan into numismatics. 8220;My mother is a history teacher and instead of gifting the usual Lakshmi-Ganesh coins, or temple tokens as they called, she makes it a point to buy a silver antique coin every year from an authorised jeweller. Most of these coins are those issued by British monarchs like George VI. As a child, I used to cherish these coins and that was also the beginning of my hobby,8221; says Ranjan. Despite having a collection of nearly 1,000 coins from across the world, Ranjan considers himself an amateur collector.

For media professional Akanksha Mittal, collecting coins, stamps, picture postcards, posters have been a hobby since childhood and of these, she says, coins are something she loves to flaunt. 8220;It started with collecting coins from across the world. Gradually, as I became interested in the history of the subcontinent, I started collecting Indian coins. From the narrow bylanes near Lal Darwaza in Ahmedabad to the Sharafa Bazaar in old Delhi to the Sunday book bazaar in Daryaganj, I have collected them from both authorised dealers and roadside vendors. A chance visit to a coin exhibition some six-seven years ago made me realise what a 8216;real8217; collection looks like,8221; she says, adding that since then she has taken up her hobby seriously. 8220;After all, by collecting antique coins, one is also preserving a part of one8217;s own heritage.8221; From the South Indian panam, the smallest coin, to punch-mark coins of ancient India to Akbar8217;s dam8212;she has a range of coins.

Arvind Chandra, retired executive director of Railway Ministry, too, started as an amateur collector while he was posted at Kolkata. Today, he has more than 10,000 coins of which 200 are rare ones. 8220;Post retirement, and in the last five years collecting coins have become a passion for me,8221; says Chandra. And with 300 books on coins in his personal library, Chandra is a walking encyclopedia on coins. 8220;I have travelled across the country in search of coins. At times, laborious hunts have proved to be futile and at others, I have got much more than my expectations,8221; he says recalling a visit to the temple town of Maheshwar near Indore where he got a rare coin for his collection. Chandra specialises in Islamic coins and claims that the variety found in Indian coinage is unparallel in the entire world. 8220;And within India, Delhi has the most number of varieties,8221; he adds.

Perhaps that8217;s one of the reasons why the city has one of the oldest and largest coin collectors8217; associations. The Delhi Coin Society, formed in 1996, has more than 300 members. Every month, the members meet at least once to discuss new findings and every year in November the Society organises a three-day exhibition of coins, banknotes and medals. Dealers, collectors, students and coin-enthusiasts from Delhi and other states participate in the show, says Chandra, the organisation8217;s present president.

One of the oldest members of the society,

S. L. Goga Jain, is also one of the prominent dealers of antique coins in the country, having bagged a gold medal for his collection at an international show in1990. Jain, who plunged into this business in 1969 with a paltry investment of Rs 300, says 8220;there8217;s hardly any business as profitable and as satisfying as this one8221;. He was initiated into numismatics as a hobby by his father, who was a collector too. 8220;I do not sell my father8217;s or my own collection,8221; says Jain whose clients are both domestic and international. Asked about his most significant collection, he says with a smile: 8220;Coins of the Sultans of Delhi.8221;