The Challenged: August Prompts 2026

My Coin and Banknote Collection

For the love of money

A small selection of my banknotes and coins: Photo by Author

August 2: Many people collect stamps, coins, or baseball cards; odd people collect barf bags, back scratchers, and (I kid you not) fossilized faeces. Do you collect anything? Is it ordinary or extraordinary? If so, why do you do it? (Ronald C Flores-Gunkle)

People have always been collectors, and I am sure there are very few things that at least one person on Earth doesn’t want to add to their collection.

My mother used to collect stamps and passed her albums and collection down to me when I was still a child. I cherished those and added to the collection for several years, but eventually I became bored with stamps and turned my attention to coins and banknotes.

I already had a collection of old pre-decimal Australian coins, such as shillings, sixpences, threepences, pennies, halfpennies, farthings, along with what was currently in circulation. However, I had more interest in collecting coins from other parts of the world.

I subscribed to a publication called World-wide Coins that had information and history of the currencies, old and new, of countries around the world, and allowed you to purchase the same. They also advertised banknotes, so I decided to collect those…