When I was about 15 years old, I remember my father pulling out his childhood coin collection to reminisce about. We sat on the floor together and looked at their old faces and designs. Being born in the 1950's he had some pretty old coins hanging around. Most memorably he had a silver dollar from the 1880's, dimes with the face of Mercury on them (as opposed to Roosevelt, who hadn't been elected president yet), and a gold coin that read "may good luck always accompany the bearer." Of all his coins, the ones that fascinated me the most were (of course) the ones from other countries. He had a silver Canadian 50 cent coin from 1957, an old Indian one pice, a 1947 Panamanian one Balboa coin, and a huge 1938 penny from the U.K.
I'd never really seen money from any other country except the U.S. and Canada, due to living so close to the border. My father didn't remember where the coins were from or perhaps didn't even know to begin with, so we went to the internet to identify them. It was a fun morning we had trying to guess where each was from and then typing it into Google. We added the Aruban coins from my parents' honeymoon and a Jamaican 10 cent coin my mom had found to his collection, and put them away for safe keeping.
I forgot about the coins for a couple of years until my boyfriend came home with a handful of foreign coins. He said they had been sitting in the reject bowl of the coin sorting machine at the bank! There was an Australian 5 cent coin, an Egyptian 5 Qirsh coin, a 10 French Francs coin, a 10 cent Euro coin, and a few Canadian pennies. He gave them to me knowing I'd be excited. I spent awhile figuring out where they were from (as some weren't written in English), then we added them to the growing collection.
A year later I took my first international trip to the Bahamas and added coins from there. I also added my $2 Canadian coin which I found stashed away in a keepsake box from a trip when I was 11. I was starting to have a proper collection now!
While moving into my new apartment, I was out at Staples to buy a desk when I saw a brand new quarter on one of the displays. I grabbed it thinking it was a good find, until I realized it wasn't an American quarter, but a Emirati one! It's funny how things like this will cross paths with you in the strangest ways.
Two more trips later I added coins from my class trip to Jordan and another cruise where I brought home coins from the Eastern Caribbean States. My collection grew enough where I bought a book to keep it in. I shared my collection with my friends and family, as I tend to do excitedly with all my travel souvenirs.
Now I have a large collection that spans every continent and includes countries that don't even exist anymore like Yugoslavia, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. It is still something that I find fun to share with friends and family. Each coin has a history and a meaning behind its design. It's interesting to research the story behind the coin or the country it represents.
It's funny to think that these coins are worth a lot to me sentimentally, but have almost no face value in most cases. Some of these coins were used to pay for someone's meal with their family, their first trip abroad, perhaps it was the last cent they had. I feel lucky to be able to witness that value from all around the world, even if they have little monetary value today. I hope that those of you reading this can appreciate the interesting details behind all these different coins too. All of the foreign coins mentioned in this post (and my entire collection) has been scanned below for you to explore and enjoy!
I'd love to hear about your foreign coin collections if you have any hanging around from your last trip abroad. Do you see any in my collection that match? Or is your's unique? Leave a comment below!
Remember to bring compassion wherever you go,
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