Money Money Money....

This weekend my uncle was in Pune. His name is Uday Palkar and his hobby is collecting old currency. He was here to participate in an exhibition of old currency which was organized by the Numismatic society of Maharashtra at the Chatur Shringi temple premises. Well my job was to accompany him for 2 days during the exhibition because he didn't know anyone else in Pune who could help him during the exhibition.

I confess that initially I was a bit irritated at the idea of not spending the weekend according to my plans, but then this was something that I had to do. So as per plans I reached the exhibition hall at 10 in the morning on Saturday. Initially I was under the impression that my uncle was the only person who would be exhibiting his collection but I was wrong. There were around 20 collectors and dealers of old currency who had their collections on display. They had come from different parts of India and most of them were from Gujarat. As far as my uncle goes he is not a dealer of coins but he just visits exhibitions and tries to see if he can get items which he does not have.

We had hardly finished setting up our table and all the other dealers started crowding around the table to see if uncle had any coins worth buying. Within 15 to 3o minutes most of them had purchased coins from us. I came to know the reason for the rush. It seems that there is lot of demand for Goan currency in the market and since uncle was the only Goan who participated in the exhibition people didn't want to miss an opportunity to get some rare Goan coins. As the day passed by more and more people came inquiring about Goan currency and were disappointed that most of it was sold out early in the day.

The dealer sitting next to our table was very friendly. I asked him which was the most expensive coin he had got for the exhibition and he immediately showed it to me. It was a Queen Victoria coin with a price tag of 10000 Rs. Then he went on to explain why the coin was expensive, he said something about the size of the coin. The coin was slightly smaller in diameter compared to the same coins minted at a different mint, that made the coin rare and expensive. The guy even told me the rate at which he had bought the coin, it was just 650 Rs.

On the second day I got into the act of selling some coins. By mistake I sold a coin worth 10 Rs for 20 Rs [:P]. And with so many people buying coins even I felt like investing some money in old currency so I picked up some coins from uncles collection but he didn't take money from me.

Overall it was a interesting experience. I got to learn a lot about old currency from experienced people. Now I have developed one more hobby that I can spend money on. So if any one of you has some old currency that you don't need feel free to give it to me [:-)].

Over and out..