Commemorative coins of ₹25, ₹50 and ₹500, issued to mark the silver jubilee of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, the golden jubilee of BHEL and the 3rd India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS), are the latest additions to B. Ravi Shankar Reddy’s treasure trove of coins and currency notes.
Despite being an avid collector of coins and stamps for over three decades, Mr. Reddy had never displayed his coin and currency collections so far. He says: “It will rob the fun of collecting apart from demoralising genuine collectors. This is because you can become a coin collector overnight these days. All you have to do is to shell out a fortune to buy them from collectors.”
“That upset me very much. I had collected coins and notes from my childhood taking lots of pains for securing them from different sources. Now, I find that I have to compete with someone who can buy the collection,” he says.
Commemorative coins issued to mark special occasions give brief history and significance of the subject, place or event on which they are brought out, apart from details of the composition of the metal or metals, its characteristics and weight.
Huge collection
He also has a huge collection of ₹20, ₹60, ₹75, ₹100, ₹125, ₹150 and ₹1000 Indian coins from 1950 till date and currency notes of 122 countries. “I have registered with the Mumbai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad mints. No announcement is made by the mints before issuing the commemorative coins and we have to keep checking online. It takes six months to two years to get the coin after it is released. One commemorative coin each would be sent free of cost to all Governors in the country and Collectors of all districts,” says Mr. Reddy.
