I used to collect coins from time to time in my childhood. Even though I gradually lost interest in the hobby, the collection has survived, safely stowed away in a shelf in my parents’ house. For quite sometime, I had wanted to transfer those coins to an album because keeping them all together in a box was causing some kind of a metal-to-metal reaction, corroding them. I managed to find time for that in this India trip and here is what I found while reorganizing the collection:
· I have 180 coins filling 2 full albums
· There are about a dozen coins form the British Indian Empire, all having King George on them.
· One coin that even precedes the crown era, issued by the East India Company in 1835.
· There are coins issued by the princely states of Travancore and Bahawalpur (now in Pakistan) and a coin from Portuguese Goa.
· There are about 3 dozen coins from European countries that don’t exist anymore like the Soviet Union, East Germany and Yugoslavia.
· A couple of dozen coins from countries that now use the Euro like France and Greece.
Sadly, the 20 or so American coins that are a part of the collection now seem boring and valueless. Anyway, kudos to the childhood me for this admirable collection and now an adult thought; how much is all this worth? Am I rich?
