Sometimes, habits are inherited. It’s difficult to explain G.R. Venkatesh’s fascination with collecting old coins that have gone out of circulation, any other way. As a boy, Venkatesh would watch his father possessively guard his small but priceless collection of these unusable pieces of metal, some of which were so old that the inscriptions were faded and the coins were shapeless.
Now, Venkatesh shows the same possessiveness for his collection of
old coins, which he began as he grew older. Both father and son considered these coins more precious that the ones in currency, because they were a repository of heritage.
Now, Venkatesh has managed to collect over 3000 coins and notes, some so rare that you won’t get to see them even in a museum. “My father was not really a collector. He had preserved some old coins as keepsakes. But he was very possessive about them. Inspired by my father, I started collecting old coins since the age of 12. Some of them belong to the Mughal period. I also have a few that were minted during the reign of Pallava and Chola dynasty in Tamil Nadu,” says Venkatesh, who has made foreign coins also a part of his collection. He is a staff of PSBB, K.K. Nagar.
He has 18 varieties of 10 paisa coin, 38 types of one rupee and five rupees, but what he says many youngsters would not have seen is the 20 paisa coin with lotus and Gandhi’s bust engraved on it.
Not keeping it just as a personal habit, Venkatesh wants to kindle in children an interest in heritage and antiquity. And for the same, he exhibited his coin collection during Madras Week celebrations at PSBB, K.K. Nagar last year. “Children were really drawn to the exhibition and had so many questions about the coins. It was history out of the book for them and seeing is much more interesting that reading,” says Venkatesh, who has stuck the coins on chart for easily exhibiting his collection. He plans to showcase it again this year during Madras Week.
He also has over 200 stamps from across the world, and is in the process of building his collection.
If you have rare collection of paintings, some priceless stamps, century old coins, or photographs of the old city, all of these keepsakes can make for a perfect exhibition item for the Madras Day. You can set up an exhibition at your house and invite friends and neighbours or do it on your street. All it requires is little inclination.
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