Coin Museum in Bangkok
In the late eighties I was walking on a Saturday on the Nieuwerzijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam, when my eye fell on a small market on the square in front of the old Tingel Tangel theater.
I saw bins with coins from all over the world and especially binders with entire collections. I walked around in amazement until I got into a conversation with a German boy of about 25 years old. He talked enthusiastically about his own collection and especially how it was built up. Namely, by looking at thousands of coins one by one and then just picking out a year, which he knew was rare.
Millions of dollars are made each year of most common currency, and they are worth nothing except the value on them. Sometimes there is a year when only a thousand copies are made due to special circumstances. They look just like all their peers, but are worth a hundredfold. And you only know that by looking in catalogues. They appear every year and in every country. And of course large yearbooks containing all countries and all years. A world opened up for me.
I became a passionate collector and initially the German was my guide. We went to fairs throughout the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. I bought coins and I bought books about coins. The common annual catalog of course and older books about older coins. Three thick books, each with 1.000 pages about all the old coins from the Middle East and the Far East, are still here in my bookcase. This includes the fact that Thailand's oldest coins date back to the eleventh century. When I left for Thailand I got rid of everything. Almost 20.000 coins in total. I have kept some old Thai coins.
These memories come to mind when reading a piece in the Bangkok Post about a new museum in Bangkok. The Coin Museum, near the main square, facing the Wat Phra Kaew and the National Museum. Because my interest in old coins has remained, it is not long before I make a trip to Bangkok. This museum is indeed nicer than the old coin museum near the entrance of the Wat Phah Kaew. Just a boring showcase there, here a historical discovery with a lot of background information. It is a pity that only a third of the museum is ready, but all kinds of sound images already work perfectly.
I too collected coins and stamps from all over the world for many years and that already started in my boyhood.
Born and raised on the once world-famous or infamous Katendrecht in Rotterdam, a peninsula sandwiched between the Maas and Rijnhavens, which at the time were still full of cargo ships from all over the world, I and my peers shared a great hobby, collecting coins and stamps .
For this we knew all kinds of shortcuts to get on board such a ship and we approached every sailor if he had some coins or stamps.
Beforehand we had already seen from the flag which nationality the ship and her crew were and then we were able to ask flawlessly in Norwegian, Swedish, German or English for stamps and/or coins, often with success and we then exchanged the duplicates among ourselves. .
I still remember the coins with a hole in them from eg Scandinavia or China, coins from India and England with a special shape and especially the beautiful stamps from the Portuguese colonies such as Lorenzo Marques and Angola.
Later, when I went sailing, my collection grew regularly, bought countless albums with accessories and also catalogues, often thick pills that resembled a glorified telephone book but did not lie in terms of price, in short, it became more and more expensive and collecting became more and more a become an obsession.
Fairs and markets were visited by me and every month this hobby absorbed a large part of my income.
However, there was also a lot to learn, especially about stamps such as topography, flora and fauna, etc., but slowly but surely the frustration surfaced that you would never be able to complete your collection and slowly my passion for collecting began to diminish and started thinking about selling it all.
Then the frustration became even greater because what was offered for it was only a pittance of the catalog value and the dealers often wanted to try to get the most out of it.
Eventually I found a private person to whom I could do everything and took the loss for granted, but that hobby has given me years of pleasure in a time when computers and the internet were still completely absent.
Have been living in Thailand for years now and still look with interest at the coins and stamps that are in circulation here, but that's about it.