Indore: Rewarding treasure of coins to interact with history & the world around

Indore: Taking up as a hobby in childhood, collecting and documenting coins has become a passion for 49-year-old businessman Raj Bhadur Singh Gyanee. Spending time, resources and energy to gather coins brings him joy. Sharing his journey, Gyanee said, “Unlike this smart generation, I come from the time when kids fancied and also, treasured every possible thing they came across.” Those days his father used to give him two paisa as pocket money since he was just nine-year-old.

“I was more fascinated with the coin than the stuff that I could buy from that,” Gyanee said. He collected those coins to fill a big piggy bank. “Then government decided to stop producing 2 paisa coins and I felt depressed,” Gyanee said. That is when his friend Avatar Singh motivated him to flourish it into a hobby. “I started my collection and picked up every coin I could lay my hands on adding coins made from different metals and designs. Now, I have aluminium, copper, nickel, brass and silver coins,” Gyanee boasted with confident smile. “I picked up coins from places that I travelled to and my friends picked up coins from their trips from me,” Gyanee said. He got coins from Calcutta, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Noida, Canada (Ottawa), Birmingham (UK), Seoul (South Korea) and Moscow.

“Starting with coins, I further expanded it to notes and wrongly printed coins. I studied and collected Mughal coins and polymer notes,” Gyanee noted. “Inspired by my collection, my children (Hardeep and Manpreet) also learned about coin collection and have their little piggy banks,” proud Gyanee gushed adding Hardeep studied numismatics and thus helps him learn more. While he was driven by passion, his family was worried about the storage to house the treasure trove. “My wife (Narendra Kaur) was anxious and complained me about space problem
as my collection kept growing,” Gyanee said. Her worry and questions were genuine while his passion too had a plan.

“I told her that these coins and the collection are for our children’s wedding as north Indian weddings are quite expensive,” Gyanee said. His wife understood the value and they jointly managed to store the collection in bank lockers and at friends’ places. Gaining popularity on social media channels, Gyanee family is hoping to break some records of and bring the hard earned collection some deserved fame.