15th National Numismatic Exhibition

Numismatics – The study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects.

As a child, when I was asked “What do you want to become when you grow up?”, the answer always varied depending on my age, mood, and what movie I watched the day before. Now, in hindsight, there seems to be only one answer that comes to mind that I should have given whenever I was asked this question.

Interesting.

Yep, one word is enough and self-explanatory.

As evident from my description on this blog and a previous post, I like collecting things. Of all things I collect, the biggest collection that I have, is of coins. Mostly Indian Commemorative coins and few of other countries as well.

I have yet to document and count all of them, as some of them are in Indore, some are here with me, but roughly, I must have at least 250+ coins. Some are rare. I don't know hobbies can be genetic or not, but it sure seems like it. My grandfather also collected coins. Recently when we shifted to a new home, his collection was found which I have now inherited. It directly added at least a hundred coins to my already existing collection. My chacha (uncle) also have a small collection of stamps. My father being a geologist, has his collection of rocks and minerals. My sister used to cut celebrity pictures from newspapers and keep them. Collecting surely runs in the family.

I have a fantastic source of coins from which I started building my collection. It cannot (and will not) reveal the source here now, but it definitely gives me and edge over an average fellow who collects coins.

While reading about numismatics, I came across a banner for 15th National Numismatic Exhibition. It's an event where collectors from all over the country come and showcase their collection. Buying, selling, auctioning also takes place. It happens all over the country at different times, but I saw the date for Bengaluru at 23rd, 24th, 25th of February 2024. I immediately knew that I had to go there. Time to see where I stand with all the coins that I have in my arsenal.

On 24th February (Saturday), I booked a Rapido for Shikshak Sadan which was around 11 km from my place. Upon reaching there, I saw people sitting on the street outside the venue and selling some coins, coin albums, and other handicraft items.

I entered the venue and purchased the ticket. It was 200Rs for one day and 500Rs for all three days. Naturally I took the 200Rs one as I was not planning to come 11kms again the next day.

Upon taking the lift to the main floor, I stepped into a small chamber. This was the room before the main hall. In this chamber, there were a lot of stalls of collectors. These were the people who do not display their collection in the main hall officially but still have good stuff. They were mainly here for selling their stuff.

It was crowded. Very crowded. Everyone was very close to each other. The very first thing I did was to take my wallet and phone out of my pockets and put them in a small backpack that I was carrying. I moved the bag from my back to front to be extra safe. The last thing I want is getting my stuff stolen.

I visited one of the stalls and the first thing that happened was I was snapped back to reality. My bubble of having a “good” collection burst in just 20 seconds of going through the coins that the stall owner had. He had all his coins in small bowls to separate them. The coin that I had which I considered rare, there was a bowl full of them. That's when I knew that I am just a droplet as compared to all these oceans. I am not even the tip of the iceberg.

I purchased seven 5Rs commemorative coins from one of the stalls. They were 30Rs each. Yup, they increase in value. 210Rs for seven 5Rs might look a lot, but this was the best deal I would have gotten there. Other stalls were selling for 50Rs each. Although cost depends on factors like rarity, condition etc. I was happy paying 30Rs.

Upon looking at some coins, I was not sure that I have it or not. There was no way to be sure, so I did not buy them to avoid redundancy in the collection. I will start working on this problem.

Once done in the chamber, I entered the main hall. It was a pretty big hall with air conditioning. It was still crowded though but at least there was room to breathe. The stall owners were wearing a proper identification cards around their necks which means all of this was official. There were large display cases full of currency notes and what not. Majority of the stuff was professionally graded.

I did not click any pictures as photography was prohibited and more importantly, I wanted to enjoy all of it instead of spend half the time clicking pictures. Though the name of the exhibition was “Numismatic”, there were people with their collection of stamps and “first day covers” (philatelists) and even their massive match-box collections (phillumenists). There were stalls that had some old magazines, celebrity autographs, posters, and even handwritten letters by famous personalities.

There was a wide variety in just the currency notes.

•  Serialized bundles of all the Indian banknotes (even demonetized ones)
•  Fancy notes whose numbers started/ended with 786
•  Series of same denomination notes with the same number (eg. 111111 to 999999)
  
•  palindrome numbers
  
•  No numbers
  
•  Misprinted margins
  
•  2 different governor signatures on the same one!!
  And so many more errored variety ones that I don't even remember now.

People had such bundles of other country's currencies as well. At the other end of the hall there was a stage on which an auction was going on for a coin from Mughal Dynasty whose starting bid was Rs.1,40,000. Before going, I was thinking it would be a small little exhibition, but it was on a much larger scale than what I had anticipated. I was clearly in the middle of the experts in the hobby.

I bought one more 5Rs coin (The SBI Commemorative coin) for 50Rs and 2 small packs of used assorted stamps for 25Rs each. At this point I had spent Rs 310 and wanted to buy more of the things that I was seeing, but I had to restrain myself. I am an impulsive person, and it can go out of hand very quickly. Also, you cannot just go in blindly and purchase every other thing you see. You need to know exactly what you already have, what exactly are you looking for, set up a strict budget before going and have at least some bargaining skills. Now I have an idea on how to proceed with all this on my next visit.

Assorted Stamps I Bought

 

There were a couple of stalls which were filled with coin holders, empty coin/stamp albums, and again it was difficult to not buy anything. For this, I need to know exactly how many coins I have in order to make purchase the album with the right number of pockets.

One collector also showed me an official Harry Potter UK 50-pence coin for Rs. 1,200. This was where I had to control myself the most. First, I did not know whether it is official or not (it is). Also, there was no way for me to make sure it's real and not a fake.

I was however looking for official Jagjit Singh's stamp for my father as he is a fan but of the 2 stalls I asked, it was not there. I could have asked on more stalls, but I was getting tired, and it was time to start the journey back home.

On reaching home, I sat and began thinking. After spending almost Rs 800 (purchases + ticket + Rapido charges), where do I stand?

One thing is pretty clear that there is no end to this hobby. After chasing whatever you are looking for, there will be something else to chase after. Be it any particular coin, any misprinted note or some obscure stamp. I cannot compare myself to those collectors because this hobby is the only thing they spend their time on. They are well-to-do in other aspects of their lives. In my opinion you cannot have that big of a collection and have a regular job where you write python scripts and work on all three cloud platforms. It needs time and dedication in hunting all the rare stuff.

I think I'll just keep adding things to my collection as I come across them. Once in a while I will visit such an event and purchase some things and make do with whatever I have. I do have to document all my collection so that I can search for anything on to go. A self-hosted baserow instance will come in handy, and I have already deployed it on my Akaza server.

I am also thinking of setting up a Philatelic Deposit Account which would deliver the newly issued stamps and first day covers to my home, so I don't have to hunt for them. Its kind of easy way out, but the old stuff is rare and costly. The current stuff is cheap and accessible. And all this current stuff will be costly and rare in the future. That's how it works. Collect what is easily available now and in when the time is right in the future, pass it on to someone who is worthy.
That's what I am planning to do.